ROUND ROCK, Texas – Fragility is the persistent truth of baseball dominance. Max Scherzer always knew it.
He built a Cooperstown-worthy resume by knowing exactly how to adapt when a little pain threatened his mechanics. He would delay a start a few days to avoid missing more, avoiding major injuries long enough to win three Cy Young Awards, help lead the Washington Nationals to a World Series title and earn about a third of a billion dollars before the 40.
And when the problems began to pile up: the dead arm that left him unable to start Game 6 of the 2021 National League Championship Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the oblique injuries that interrupted his brief tenure with the Mets New York, the shoulder injury that cost him marked the end of the Texas Rangers‘ regular season last year; he reflected on each of them as a stroke of luck, as “it could have been worse,” as problems that delayed his return, without ever completely endangering him. Fragility was always there, something to navigate, something to never fear.
But that fragility has never come as close to catching Scherzer as it did on the mound of a Class AAA ballpark in suburban Austin on a hot Saturday night in June. That night, Scherzer was trying to prove (to the Rangers, General Manager Chris Young and maybe even a little to himself) that he can be counted on again as a stalwart in a contending team’s rotation.
Scherzer has made just eight regular-season starts and three postseason appearances for the Rangers, with whom he is under contract through the end of this season. It has no real ties to the Class AAA Round Rock Express, and fans of the team have little Major League history with it. Kids climb the fences around the bullpen because they know his name, if not his best moment. His parents approach with their phones out because they saw him when he was untouchable, so they are grateful to see him up close now.
But this organization, like the Mets and Dodgers, has not known Scherzer at his best. He is here as a dedicated mercenary, as someone who somehow still has something to prove.
Scherzer pitched in the World Series for the Rangers, sure, but just barely. He left Game 3 in unmistakable pain after a back injury that ultimately required offseason surgery. For two months, Scherzer had to watch his every move, get out of bed very carefully, pick up her children with constant caution, because doctors told her that the risk of re-injury was high.
“I had to be focused on every movement of my life. Getting out of bed, getting out of cars,” said Scherzer, who said the surgery relieved “a tremendous amount of pain.”
Still, once that time had passed, he no longer worried. She knew she could come back, maybe even in the first two months of the season. The existential threat was neutralized and barely tolerated. He was going to be fine.
But when Scherzer started throwing, he began to feel discomfort in his thumb that moved up to his shoulder area. He felt the same way at the end of the 2023 season, when he finally injured the teres major in his shoulder. He thought maybe that had happened again.
“When I threw a ball, even 60 feet, it felt like a triceps strain. Every time I tried to throw, my triceps would completely lock up. The ball couldn’t leave my hand without pain,” Scherzer said. So he opted for images. But one MRI scan after another (on the shoulder, the arm, the neck) came back clean.
“Especially when I have Strasburg in the back of my mind, as much as I’ve dealt with (thoracic outlet syndrome) and nerve issues, that really woke me up and I was like, ‘Wait, what’s going on here?’” he said. Scherzer, referring to his former Nationals teammate Stephen Strasburg, who recently retired after a long struggle to return from surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. “This is not right. This is completely abnormal.”
Scherzer, 39, has never speculated about retirement. Even as injuries piled up in recent years, he never seemed willing to consider it. But when the pain didn’t stop and the answers didn’t come, he wondered.
“That definitely makes you wonder what’s going to happen here,” Scherzer said.
Eventually, Scherzer’s doctors, many of whom also treated Strasburg, diagnosed a nerve problem. And fortunately, at least for now, they didn’t think it originated in his shoulder like thoracic outlet syndrome might. The pain, they concluded, moved from the thumb up the arm, not from the shoulder down.
Scherzer thinks he also knows why that started happening. He knows he’s been gripping the ball harder than ever since MLB decided to enforce its rules against pitchers using sticky substances in 2021. He believes that ban has caused the forearms of other pitchers (and, all too reliably, , your elbows) also give way. . He thinks many of his teammates are too afraid to say so because MLB decided to recommit to the rules against the longstanding tradition of relying on multiple catch agents.
Those theories are for another day. Scherzer will never be without them. He has been a vocal, but not universal, critic of MLB’s approach to modernizing the game: a cautious supporter of the shot clock, a gadfly who throws tantrums over sticky things. For years he sat at the negotiating table as a member of the players union subcommittee and developed a reputation for stubbornness and ruthlessness. When Scherzer believes he is right, he cannot stand it when others are wrong. And he believes he’s right about the steps MLB should take to put the game back in the hands of starting pitchers, both in the big leagues and in player development.
And now, in some ways, his influence is waning. He is no longer a member of the union’s executive subcommittee, so he will not be a de facto spokesman for the players when it comes to negotiating issues. He knows MLB officials may dismiss him as someone who argues for the sake of arguing. He suspects that he is often screaming into the void.
But he’s a World Series champion and he’s made money. MLB labeled him a cheater with a sticky suspension in 2023. His work is already Hall of Fame worthy. The void cannot recover any of that.
Gambling, on the other hand, continues to pose a threat. The nerve injury, let alone the offseason back surgery, reminded him of that. And for once, after years of relentless certainty, he’s not sure how long he can take it.
“Fortunately, I have managed to control this nerve. We calmed him down and I was able to recover and get back on the mound and pitch and not have this surge again,” Scherzer said. “But at the end of the day, this is due to the thumb and the stress it receives, and I have to be extremely diligent in my training program.”
Scherzer abandoned the forearm strength program he had had since college. He is tripling the time he spends on his grip muscles, although he is aware that if he pushes too hard, that could also add stress to other fragile parts of the arm. So far, so good. But he knows the line is thin, so thin that he has struggled to know what will happen if he has to cross it again.
“When I’m dealing with nerve issues and when doctors are talking about TOS, I won’t have (thoracic outlet) surgery. If this problem comes back and the only option is surgery, I will not have that surgery,” Scherzer said. “Nervous things really make you think a lot about the long-term consequences. That’s just the reality of pitching right now. “I’m just trying to find a way to navigate it.”
When he pitched against another former aging ace, Dallas Keuchel, and the Tacoma Rainiers on Saturday night, Scherzer’s fastball topped out at 93 mph, according to stadium radar. Most of his toughest fastballs followed moments of frustration. More often, the four-seamer sat at 91 or 92, a few mph below his average from last year, three or four below his best years in the Nationals. Maybe the adrenaline of a Major League game will get you back a few miles per hour. It’s usually like this. But Scherzer admits he doesn’t know for sure.
“For me, this is kind of spring training, so you have to take it with a grain of salt,” he said. “You judge yourself more by how you pitch at the major league level. It’s kind of useless to think and speculate because there’s nothing that simulates facing hitters in that environment. “It will be something to pay attention to or navigate as it emerges.”
He threw 79 pitches Saturday night, which at other times in his career would have been enough to indicate he was ready to start throwing roughly 100 every five days. And on Saturday, Scherzer made it clear that if the Rangers want him to pitch against the Kansas City Royals this weekend, he can do it. But what exactly he can give is no longer as certain as before.
“It’s just a question of how many pitches he would have at the major league level right now and how to navigate where the team is, where the bullpen is,” Scherzer said. “Where I fit in with my ability, what my pitch count would be at the major league level, that will be discussed in the next few days.”
At the minor league level, Scherzer was not dominant. The first pitch he threw was an inside fastball that the Rainiers’ leadoff hitter redirected out of the park. He allowed three runs, four hits and two walks and struck out eight.
But when he left the mound after 4⅔ innings, the Rangers crowd at Dell Diamond stood and cheered him anyway.
They weren’t applauding his last line, or trying to cheer up a beloved local star they hoped would return soon. They were cheering her name. They were applauding her resume. They were cheering because, if everyone was honest with themselves, they weren’t sure when they would be able to cheer for him again.
And when Scherzer took off his unfamiliar cap and showed off his bald head, breaking his usual intimidating game-day persona to offer a grateful salute, he felt different. This time, for the first time, he wonders how many more chances they will have to cheer him up too.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.