Max Scherzer’s last two outings have been true exhibitions during a season of them: a start last week vs. Nicaragua’s World Baseball Classic team, and then an outing in a minor-league game Monday.
When it comes to the latter, well, it doesn’t matter where he pitches, all that matters is what he’s working on.
"You take spring as the hand that you’re dealt,” Scherzer said Monday in discussing working on his slider over his last two outings. “I’m ramping up, I’ve thrown maybe 12 innings in five months. I don't have to reinvent the wheel here, I just have to get my reps in and get my work in.”
As for the former, well…he pitched against a WBC team but had no desire to actually play in the Classic this year, citing the time of year as the main factor.
“For me personally, I'm not ready to step into a quasi-playoff game right now, physically. If I do that, I'm rolling the dice with my arm,” Scherzer said. “It’s hard enough to try to make 33 starts and throw 200 innings as it is with a normal ramp-up in spring. If I go out there and try to do too much early in spring, it can really affect me throughout the season.”
At age 38, with three Cy Young Awards under his belt, Scherzer knows what it takes to get ready for a season – and after dealing with a couple nagging injuries last year, he knows Father Time is creeping up.
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Scherzer almost played in the 2017 tournament, when he was a spry 32, but an injury knocked him out of that tournament. He went on to win his second straight NL Cy Young that year, so maybe it was better off – and he thinks that like the NHL and their Olympic break, perhaps the WBC would be better off if it was held during the season, perhaps during a two-week break like the NHL takes.
“If there was a format where the WBC was during the season, I think you would get more pitcher participation,” Scherzer said, “and I think it’d be more exciting for the fans, because you’ve have pitchers more built up without pitch counts, and it’d be more like a real game.”
To Scherzer’s point, with two pools complete and two others halfway through, the tournament’s innings leader is Matt Harvey, who started two of Italy’s four round-robin games and threw seven total innings. A dozen pitchers made three appearances in pool play in the two pools held in Asia – a notion made easier with each team now having an off day due to five teams per pool – but only one of those, Cuba’s Miguel Romero, threw more than 4 1/3 in those three outings.
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