Mets' Max Scherzer finds his footing in wild-card rematch with Padres
NEW YORK — In some ways, the stakes were symbolic: hard not to call it a rematch when the team that eliminated you before the postseason had barely begun is back into town; hard not to wonder whether the man on the mound would be out for — and up for — revenge.
After a 101-win regular season and 175 days in first place, the 2022 New York Mets were eliminated over three agonizing games in Queens last October. Their ace, the man who was supposed to be the battle-tested war hero — insofar as the postseason is analogous to combat, and perhaps no one else makes it seem that way more than he does — failed them in dramatic fashion at the outset, and the Mets never recovered.
But continued dominance from a 38-year-old pitcher is inherently precarious — even if his name has become a sort of shorthand explanation in and of itself, a reference to a long legacy of doing whatever it takes to stay on top. Baseball’s most volatile team would live and die by the strategy too expensive to ignore: a pair of future Hall of Fame pitchers fending off the effects of aging. And Justin Verlander started the season on the injured list, so there were real stakes to be found Monday if you allowed yourself the kind of sacrilege to consider that Max Scherzer might simply be diminished.
The wild-card loss to the San Diego Padres, in which he gave up seven runs in 4⅔ innings, came a week after Scherzer lost his last start of the 2022 regular season in Atlanta, as the Mets squandered an NL East title and a bye to the division series. Through two starts this season, Scherzer had an ERA over 6.0 and was forced to admit that the pitch clock might be particularly taxing for the more, ahem, veteran guys. Fifteen seconds to catch your breath is a young man’s game.
Forgive the utterly inexpert analysis, but in 2022, the Mets seemed charmed — until they didn’t. Over the course of the season, an oft-unlucky franchise found itself on the right side of enough breaks to build some confidence. Of course, it takes a lot more than luck to win 101 games, but when the luck wore off at the end of the year, it was hard to see how they had ever won.
In the course of a three-run seventh inning Monday, two balls off Mets’ bats dribbled down the third base line, easing to a standstill just inside the foul line. It was great and goofy and guffaw-worthy — and icing on the cake, ultimately — as well as an undeniable sign that the breaks were back, as they often seem to be when the real stuff is working, too.
“Great job by Bill, our groundskeeper,” Mets manager Buck Showalter deadpanned about the flukey infield singles.
“No, Max was the key, though,” he corrected himself, unsolicited.
Through five hard-fought innings, Scherzer kept the potent Padres lineup off the board, and the Mets paired that with a little luck to walk away with a 5-0 victory. After his previous outing against the Brewers unraveled, Scherzer remarked on his inability to put guys away after getting two strikes. He blamed command and promised late nights studying the tape.
“Thought I took a step in the right direction,” he said postgame Monday. “I’m not broken. I wasn’t broken after that Milwaukee start.”
While he still struggled to pinpoint locate his fastball, he praised the shape of his off-speed pitches. He admitted that the pitch clock still feels fast to him — 15 years without one is tough to shake — especially at the start of at-bats. But the most encouraging sign was that he fell short of his own expectations. Although they managed just a single hit off Scherzer, the Padres fouled off 25 pitches, driving his pitch count up early and forcing him from the game after the fifth.
“I’ll always say I want to go deeper,” he said. “I just know what I'm capable of.”
Every time Scherzer takes the mound, there is a tension between two seemingly immovable forces: his commitment to not merely staying at the top of his game but pushing ever higher and the linear ravages of aging. Any falter could be the first step in inevitable decline — or evidence of weakness to be rooted out and eradicated.
How long can a peak last? And what awaits on the other side? The path has to lead to some sort of precipice eventually. It won’t be like this forever — it can’t be — but at least for now, Scherzer seems to have found his footing.
