Max Scherzer poised to join elite strikeout club
Mad Max, as many of you know, pitched for the Tigers from 2010 to 2014. He was on the team for their last four post-season runs with a trip to the World Series in 2012. He won his first Cy Young Award in Detroit.
During the Nationals game on April 16th, Max struck out 10 D-backs and passed Cy Young on the all-time strikeout leader board. Of importance, this was his 99th game where he struck out 10 our more batters. There are only four pitchers in MLB history with 100 or more career games with 10+ K’s.
On April 27th, he struck out 9 Blue Jays in six innings. Earlier this week, he pitched a complete game, again striking out 9, before rushing to the hospital delivery room for the birth of his third child (a boy, named Jared; would a third girl have been named Kay?).
Getting to 100 -- Max is pitching now against the Yankees (in NY). He had 6 straight K’s at one point. It would be cool to see him get his one hundredth 10+ strikeout game. Given the struggles with Yankee hitting this year, it’s possible.
Cool story, bro…
During Thursday’s MLB game of the week, Max was in the dugout and was interviewed during the game. He was asked which was more nerve racking – waiting for a World Series game to start (when he was pitching) or rushing to the hospital for the birth of his son. He said the hospital drive was up there, but pre-game World Series was worse.
Yep, current box score says he has 10 Ks after 4 innings.
Congrats Max!!!
https://www.espn.com/mlb/boxscore/_/gameId/401227553
Nolan Ryan 215
Randy Johnson 212
Roger Clemens 110
Pedro Martinez 108
Max Scherzer 100
I think he easily can make it to 3rd place on this list. 2nd and 1st are another thing.
Good for Max.
Miguel passed Babe Ruth in hits last night as well. Some records are going to broken by some players who play/played for the Tigers, especially if Verlander was healthy too.
Is there an argument as to who is the better pitcher or which one has a had a better career, Max or Verlander?
Tough question. Max has had an advantage pitching in the NL for a bunch of years. Verlander has had a longer run with Scherzer not really getting things together until his mid to late 20's. Scherzer has 3 Cy's to 2 for JV, but Justin should have at least one, and maybe 2 more. I've always been a Verlander guy, so I'll go with him largely because the numbers are close but he's thrown about 600 more innings than Max.
It's amazing Max couldn't get out of the 6th inning when he played here.
OT, the OP alluded to Jared and Kay jewelers. Staying OT, there haven't been many ads as barf-inducing as the one where the woman says "We went to Jared!"
Nice, I wasn’t even thinking that! I was thinking ‘strike three’ K.
I heard an item of trivia today. Something along the lines of Doc Gooden’s strikeout rate during his “Dr. K” season being only league average in 2021. I just started paying attention to MLB again after skipping the last 2-3 seasons. Something has to be done about this. I am in favor of moving the rubber back 6 inches, while studying the impact of moving it back further than that in the minors.
Hitting and pitching go in cycles. I don’t think something as drastic as moving the rubber back is needed. I watch baseball daily and the product is fine.
If anything take away the shift, but I hope they don’t do that either. It’s an interesting tactic in an evolving game.
Really? Move it back 6 inches? That would give a definite advantage to the hitters.
Curves, screwballs, change-ups, and sliders won't make their wicked moves until pitchers can adjust to the distance. Too many pitchers already crying that the ball is "juiced" up for the hitters.
MLB is trying to shorten the length of the game b/c they have been running to long.
IMO, moving the mound back 6 inches would increase the length of the game, increase hitter stats, and destroy pitcher stats.
The lowest league-wide batting average is .237 in 1968. The current league average is .233. 10 years ago, the league average was 7 K/9IP. This year it’s 9K/IP.
If you want to decrease the time of games, give the hitters a chance to put the ball in play. The rate of the three true outcomes (HR, K, BB) has never been higher. I find that boring.
Another way to address pace of play is to just get the pitchers to pitch the ball.
https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length
The total time for the inaction pitches in 1984 — the elapsed time between a pitcher releasing one pitch and his release of the next pitch — was 32 minutes and 47 seconds.
The total time for inaction pitches in 2014 was 57 minutes and 41 seconds.
This is how a game can have an almost identical number of pitches thrown, batters faced, baserunners, hits, walks, strikeouts, and runs scored compared to another game, yet take more than a half-hour longer.
On MLB Tonight, one of the guys relayed that a current manager said (in disgust): “we’re not playing baseball, we are hitting home runs”.
I’ve been happy to see Max succeed so much after leaving here. He’s a warrior on the mound. He bet on himself and it’s completely paid off both for him and for Washington.
It’s such a shame that Tigers team came up empty handed.
Verlander, Scherzer, Sanchez, Fister, and Porcello was such a good rotation to go along with the best hitter on the planet.
I know they had Price as well there for a minute, but by that point Verlander was struggling and the rotation wasn’t as strong as the names would later suggest.
Empty handed? Since 2006, the Tigers have won a rookie of the year, a triple crown, two pennants, four division titles and multiple MVPs, Cy Young’s, Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers and had many All Star starters. If that’s empty handed it sounds pretty good to me
The amount of time wasted on this board on semantics never ceases to amaze. I’m probably going to regret using the word amaze there, aren’t I?
Not semantics. The Tigers were a great ballclub and the fact that they didn’t win a World Series doesn’t diminish that.
Winning a championship involves a great degree of luck. That can’t be said for most regular season outcomes
So glad the Tigers signed Jordan Zimmerman instead of keeping him around.
They offered Max a ton. He wasn’t going to stay in Detroit.
They offered him 144 mil if my memory serves me right. He knew he was worth more and got 210 mil. It wasn’t really a close call regardless of how much 144 mil is.
He would have stayed if they didn’t low ball him and then leak the offer to the press to try and embarrass him
I was at Max Scherzer's 20K game...which of course was vs the Tigers who had Jordan Zimmermann pitching that night. I had first row seats and can actually be seen in the highlights footage of the game.
Ironically having these seats meant that I was just way too caught up in all the stuff happening in front of me, so I only took note of the strikeout count when it was like 18 already (up to that point the unusually loud cheering from the D.C. crowd had been somewhat of a mystery to me).
A fun fact is that the Tigers had to option him to the minors at one point.
And now he’s a first ballot hall of famer with another team ?
There is absolutely no excuse that the 2013 Tigers didn’t win the World Series (more talented than their pennant team in 2012).
They had JV, Scherzer, Anibal, and Fister as their starters (Wins leader, ERA leader, strikeout leader) and Porcello and Smyly in the pen along with Benoit to close.
Every single starter in the field made an all-star game within the last 3 years. They may actually be one of the most talented teams not to win a pennant.
“Benoit as the closer” was the reason WHY they didn’t win.
Dombroski did not believe in having a bullpen.
Benoit had an ERA+ of 207 that year so that wasn’t the problem.
Dombrowski only had one or two elite bullpens but it wasn’t for lack of trying