Seattle – Max Scherzer had not pitched in 22 days, had been left off the Division Series roster of the Toronto Blue Jays and had stumbled to the finish of the regular season with a 9.00 ERA in his final six starts and enough physical maladies over the past two seasons—back, shoulder, triceps, hamstring, thumb, lat, neck, etc.—to mimic a 41-year-old weekend pickleball player, not the 41-year-old three-time Cy Young Award winner that he is. His start in Game 4 of the ALCS had the trappings of a tour of a 1970s band: cutely nostalgic, but nothing more.

Then he started warming up in the T-Mobile Park visiting bullpen and something magical happened. The ball flew out his hand with ease and power. He spun the ball with precision. Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker could hardly believe what he was watching.

“I knew when he was warming up it was going to be good,” Walker said. “He wanted this one bad and you’d probably ask anybody in that clubhouse and they, they felt it, too. When he was warming up, I felt some of the hairs that are barely there on my arm standing up because I could tell he had it.”

What we do in the prime of our work is what most defines us. It is the first paragraph of our obituary. But sometimes it is what we do in the twilight of our careers, long after a reputation has been earned, that burnishes the oeuvre, if not creates a legend of its own. Late career greatness has the added emotion of bittersweetness, born from the uncertainty that it may well be the last of it.

Scherzer had one of those nights. He defied age, time, injury and, almost comically, his own manager. He threw harder than he had in two years. He had the best curveball of his life. He stomped around the mound like a young lion. He pitched two outs into the sixth inning to earn his ninth career postseason win, but first one in six years, as Toronto evened the series at two games each with a second straight pounding of the Mariners, 8–2.

Scherzer still has something left in the tank

His 500th career start did not rank among his very best statistically, not for a man familiar with the spectacular, but it did rank among his most meaningful. Dramatic and theatric, it was a Wagnerian opera. Twilight of the Gods in spikes.

Scherzer has one of the great game faces in baseball lore, right there in intensity with players such as Will Clark, Randy Johnson and Albert Belle. He can bore a hole through you with his eyes of mismatched colors. But leaving the clubhouse after Game 3 on the eve of his start, he was positively buoyant.

“It’s funny you should say that,” Walker said, “because I saw it when he was warming up. I’m like, Oh, s--, it’s coming out! His warmup was that good. And it looked 95 [mph] in the pen. So, I was like, He is different from other starts this year. There was a different mindset. Like it was very aggressive and determined and passionate, and it was just … it was pretty awesome.”

And when the time-defying job was done, standing in a hallway outside the Blue Jays’ clubhouse, Scherzer was the personification of joyfulness. He beamed not with relief, satisfaction or redemption, but with the bliss of his favorite fuel, contributing to victory, especially on a big stage like the ALCS.

“It is always because of the clubhouse and the team,” Scherzer said about what made his first playoff win in six years so special. “It is the way it intersects with our clubhouse —the way we play as a team, how everybody finds a way to do something, to help something out. You know, you could be the last guy on the bench and go out and make a great play. And so tonight … you know, I didn’t pitch well in September—I get it—but I had a chance tonight and I went out there and gave it everything I’ve got to help the team win.”

Only three pitchers ever won a postseason start at a more advanced age: Roger Clemens (five times), Kenny Rogers (three times) and Dennis Martinez. Scherzer gave up two runs in 5 2/3 innings, dipping and dodging around four walks and three hits.

Curveball surprisingly comes to the rescue

Scherzer hit 96.5 mph with his fastball for the first time since June 24, 2023. He obtained a career-high six swings and misses on his curveball. He threw the pitch 10 times and the befuddled Mariners swung vainly at every one of them, missing six times, fouling off two and turning two into outs.

The curveball is Scherzer’s fourth best pitch. Hitters slugged .674 against it this year, making it the sixth-worst curveball among all pitchers who threw the pitch at least 150 times. But on this autumn night, slathered pixie dust and dying light against a steel gray sky, suddenly his good curveball re-appeared as if out of his youth, though the true source was sweat equity. Scherzer used his 22-day health sabbatical to fix it.

“It was like, ‘All right, let’s get to work,’” Walker said. “Give him the credit that he deserves. He put his foot on the pedal and got after it. And it showed tonight.

“It was all about getting the good spin and not leaving it up in the zone—being really aggressive and getting that good bite down in the zone.  It wasn’t necessarily grip. It was just feel. He’s such a feel guy. There was nothing really mechanical. For the most part it was just being aggressive to his spots, knowing he had to locate. Locate his slider, knowing where he had to keep his curveball and then stepping on his heater.

“It probably surprised them a little bit with the velocity that he had tonight. I think that sped them up enough where that curveball became really effective.”

Said Scherzer, “I knew there were situations that we could throw it. It's not like I said, ‘I can throw it every pitch, in every situation and kind of navigate it.’ It just happened that tonight that I had a great curveball.

“Kirky [Catcher Alejandro Kirk] kept calling it and I was like, ‘Hey, I get what he’s seeing. I get what he’s doing.’ And I was thinking, Just execute the pitch in the right location. Don’t hang it. Step on it and so don’t get beat on it. Step on it.”

Max Scherzer’s curveball and fastball were firing like they hadn’t in quite a while.
Max Scherzer’s curveball and fastball were firing like they hadn’t in quite a while. | Kevin Ng-Imagn Images

Difficult steps to get the playoff win

Years from now, when they tell the legend of Scherzer’s Twilight Game, to tell it properly they will have to recall several episodes, as if acts in an opera. The first happened in the first inning, when Scherzer looked more like Middling Max than Mad Max, having walked two batters. Scherzer was pitching to the red-hot Jorge Polanco when first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. walked halfway to the mound and shouted something to Scherzer. The pitcher nodded.

What was it? Scherzer is an old school pitcher who comes to the set position with his glove high, near his head. In this age when teams use AI to decipher pitch-tipping tells from hitters, the practice was the equivalent of having a bad poker face. Several teams, including the Yankees last month, picked up his pitches because he was inadvertently showing his grip toward the runner at first and the first-base coach. Either one could relay the pitch to the runner on second, who could relay it to the batter.

Guerrero reminded Scherzer to move his hands forward, so that his head would block the view into his glove by the runner and coach.

“Correct,” Walker said when I ran it by him. “He’s done that forever. He’s a creature of habit.”

At 1-and-2, an alerted Scherzer threw a changeup that floated off the outside corner. Polanco clearly didn’t know it was coming. Fooled, he hit it on the ground. The Blue Jays turned a double play.

“That,” Scherzer said, “was huge. It saved me.”

Later, after a leadoff walk to No. 9 hitter Leo Rivas, Scherzer was pitching to Cal Raleigh when the Jays bench noticed that Rivas was taking an extraordinarily long lead at first base.

The Jays know that no Mariner will attempt to steal while Raleigh is hitting, because Toronto is likely to intentionally walk The Big Dumper with no regrets. Why was Rivas so far off the base if he was not running?

“You could tell guys try to get out there a little farther,” Walker said, referring to how some runners will extend their lead to try to peek into Scherzer’s glove.  “That might have led to the pickoff tonight.”

The Toronto bench sent in a sign to Kirk for a pickoff. Kirk relayed it to Scherzer, who spun and fired a strike for his first pickoff in nine years.

For pure entertainment value, nothing topped the episode when manager John Schneider bounded from the dugout to visit Scherzer on the mound with two outs and one on in the fifth inning. It was the Classic Vinyl version of Max. Everybody in the dugout practically grabbed their popcorn.

“Yeah, we knew it was coming,” Walker said, laughing. “It’s always entertaining seeing Max react like that.”

Schneider had no designs of removing Scherzer, unless in the unlikely event the pitcher admitted he was done. Before Schneider even reached the mound in his easy jog, Scherzer began yelling at him to stay put.

“If you look at the video,” said second baseman Andres Gimenez, “I am nowhere near the mound. Once I saw Max’s reaction, I figured, ‘I better stay here.’”

It was vaudevillian how Scherzer protested and Schneider wore it.

“I mean, I knew it was going to happen,” Walker said. “If there was any hesitation, he was ready to take him out. And Max has always been honest with us, too. He tells us the day of the game and every inning how he’s feeling. So, there's always constant communication with him. So, it's never a surprise. We knew he was feeling good.”

Said Scherzer, “I wanted the ball. I said, ‘I’m good to go. You don’t have to worry.’”

Schneider sheepishly returned to the dugout, though stifling a grin. True to his word, Scherzer struck out Randy Arozarena with another sharp-breaking curveball.

Only time will tell if this Scherzer’s final start

The Blue Jays came here to face the second-best home pitching staff in the league, down two games to none and handing the ball to two Cy Young Award winners, Shane Bieber and Scherzer, who were so limited by injuries that neither reached 90 innings this season. And then, while the offense made like the Showtime Lakers and ran the Mariners off the court with 21 runs on 29 hits of face-break baseball, Bieber and Scherzer pitched like aces. There was nothing but their old history to suggest the veterans would pitch as well as they did.

“Experience,” Walker said, “is huge. It’s not just about stuff. In these kinds of settings, you want someone that’s done it before. Sometimes, there are some young guys that have done really well, don’t get me wrong. But it does feel good knowing that they’ve been there. You trust. You just feel like they’re going to be good in these moments.”

Scherzer had not won a start since Aug. 25. His September ERA was 10.50. This night changed everything.

“You just feel like you’re contributing,” he said, “and you just know everybody else wants to contribute, and it just kind of feeds off itself.”

It was more than half an hour after Game 4, and the glow still radiated from Scherzer’s face. He wants to keep pitching, but no pitcher’s future is certain at 41 years old. That is a decision for another day. On this night, the joy on his face outshone even the velocity of his fastball and the snap to his curveball. Twilights like this never really end.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Max Scherzer Unleashed Unexpected Weapon to Baffle Mariners, Even ALCS 2–2.

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