With the Toronto Blue Jays having evened the series in the best-of-seven ALCS at two games apiece, a trend is starting to emerge. The Seattle Mariners won both games in Toronto and the Blue Jays have, so far, won the first two games in Seattle, including Thursday night’s 8-2 victory (box score). Yes, the road team has won every single game.
We’ve seen a road team win all seven games twice before in seven-game series. The 2023 ALCS and the 2019 World Series. You know who was on that 2019 Nationals team that won it all? Max Scherzer.
He took the ball for the Blue Jays in Game 4, hoping to help the Jays avoid falling behind 3-1 in the series. And though vintage Mad Max isn’t really there anymore, the 41-year-old truly turned back the clock Thursday night, enough to gut out the win.
The final line was less impressive than he actually looked for the last several innings, thanks to a stranded runner coming around to score after Scherzer’s departure, though it was still plenty good: 5 ⅔ IP, 3 H, 2 ER.
Again, though, it was more than the numbers. It was Max Freaking Scherzer. Mad Max.
We’ve all seen his facial expressions and mannerisms on the mound long enough to recognize them. He was all but breathing fire on the mound from his first pitch. He paced around the mound after getting swings and misses. There was a lout outburst after an inning-ending strikeout of Eugenio Suárez.
And, of course, there was manager John Schneider having the audacity to go out and check on Mad Max with two outs in the fifth.
Scherzer would strike the next hitter out. The intensity was on full display.
Scherzer is 41 years old. He had a 9.00 ERA in his last five starts of the regular season. He hadn’t pitched in a game since Sept. 24 and wasn’t even on the ALDS roster. He wasn’t supposed to do this against a good Mariners offense.
And yet, the longer he stayed on that mound Thursday, the closer he looked to Prime Scherzer.
He got in trouble in the first and a double play got him out of it. He allowed a solo homer to start the second. He had no strikeouts through 2 ⅔. He ended with five strikeouts through 5 ⅔ innings. He only threw his curveball 10 times, but he got 10 swings on it, including six whiffs. On the 20 swings he drew with his four-seam fastball, 12 were foul balls.
Some out there — myself included, admittedly — thought it was a mistake for the Blue Jays to trust Scherzer for many outs in a game that they needed to win. Schneider saw something, though.
“So in talking to him over the past couple weeks, I think you feel comfortable and confident about where he is, and hopefully how he can finish some pitches a little bit better than he was a couple weeks ago,” he said of Scherzer before Game 3 Wednesday. “So it’s easy to trust a guy who has been through what he’s been through and done what he’s done. One of the many great things about Max is he does not pull any punches. He’ll tell you exactly how he’s feeling. So it may not be always what I say to you guys for certain reasons, but I think that the rest kind of was a good thing for him.”
Scherzer before the game was, well, Mad Max.
“I love it,” he said Wednesday of the so-called pressure. “This is what you play for. You want to have the ball in this situation, you want to be pitching in the postseason. Every game in the postseason’s a must-win, so when you step on the field in these situations, you got to bring it, you got to have your A game, you got to really be on top of your stuff. So they’re going to be as prepared as heck to go against me and try to beat me, and I got to do the same and find a way to navigate it.”
This wasn’t Babe Ruth allegedly calling his shot or anything that dramatic, but Scherzer did lay it out. He said he needed to find a way to navigate the game. He did exactly that for his 17 outs of work.
None of this is surprising, of course. Scherzer has won three Cy Young awards and two World Series titles. In the regular season, he’s won 221 games and struck out nearly 3,500 hitters. In 143 playoff innings before Game 4, he had 171 strikeouts and seven wins.
In Game 4, he recorded his first postseason win since 2019. You know, that same year that Scherzer and his Nationals won four road games to take the World Series. The Blue Jays, after starting in a 2-0 hole, are halfway there in the 2025 ALCS.
