A dead arm kept Max Scherzer from pitching in Game Six of the NLDS, which Scherzer believes was due to pitching fewer innings in the lead-up to the postseason. However, as the ace right-hander told Jorge Castillo of The Los Angeles Times, Scherzer doesn’t hold the Dodgers at fault for the situation, nor was the postseason a factor in his decision to sign with the Mets rather than return to Chavez Ravine. The Dodgers tried to limit their starters’ innings in order to keep them fresh for October, and Scherzer went into the playoffs assuming (and he told the club as much) that he was able to keep up the same workload as in 2019, when he helped lead the Nationals to the World Series. But, he and the Dodgers “never took that variable into consideration” of how pitching less heading into 2021 postseason would impact his arm.
“I bear more brunt of that because of me having those discussions with [manager Dave Roberts] about that, about how I can be used in the postseason and coming up short on that, on my end, of saying I can do something and then it didn’t happen,” Scherzer said. He also noted that his upcoming free agency didn’t weigh into his scratched start: “It’s literally my arm’s health. When you can’t throw, you can’t throw….Throwing in Game 6, I would’ve been rolling the dice on sustaining a substantial injury.”
More from other pitchers around the game…
- Tyler Matzek didn’t appear in a single big league game from 2016-19, as the southpaw found his career all but halted due to control issues and a case of the yips. It took a long time and a lot of work for Matzek to feel comfortable on and off the field, as The Ringer’s Jordan Ritter Conn details, but Matzek returned to become a strong contributor out of the Braves bullpen over the last two seasons, culminating in his role in Atlanta’s World Series title. While Matzek’s control issues haven’t entirely gone away (he has a 12.2% walk rate in 2020-21), he has posted a 2.64 ERA and 31.2% strikeout over 92 regular season innings, plus an excellent 1.48 ERA over 24 1/3 postseason frames.
- One of the Yankees’ more prominent pitching prospects, Clarke Schmidt’s big league career has been limited to 12 2/3 innings, due in large part to an elbow injury that sidelined him for much of 2021. “It just didn’t respond like we expected it to and it took forever for it to get right,” Schmidt tells The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler about his injury, an extensor strain that Schmidt described as “basically the same thing as tennis elbow.” Once finally recovered, Schmidt was able to pitch 38 innings of minor league ball and then 6 1/3 innings with the Yankees at the MLB level, and most importantly he says he is feeling healthy heading into the 2022 campaign. Some adjustments have already been made to his offseason training plan, however, as Schmidt feels that overwork led to last year’s injury. “I just pushed the gas pedal a little bit too much too early and I learned my lesson,” he said. It seems like that New York will start Schmidt in Triple-A to give him a bit more seasoning (he has only 25 2/3 innings of Triple-A ball under his belt), but for a Yankees club that can always use pitching depth, Schmidt could be an important arm to watch as the season proceeds.
Matzek has been a great find for ATL
Thank Walt Weiss of all people.
What kind of return do you think the Braves could get in a Matzek trade? Not that they should trade him but he is coming off 2 dominant seasons and has a lot of team control. I wonder what that would fetch on the market.
See my biscuit recipe below for an answer Hammer.
And please respond to each instruction with a paragraph of your own.
Matzek’s story is so great. Go from the yips and in the indies just 3 or so years ago to striking out Mookie Betts and Albert Pujols in the game that decided if they went to the World Series has to be one of the greatest comebacks I’ve seen in my lifetime.
It really is a shame to see players go through so much and all of the years in the minors only to get the yips. Ankiel should have been a TOR pitcher. Knoblauch comes to mind too. Pretty sure he is the one that hit Keith Olberman’s mom in the face with an errant throw. Remember when Sasser couldn’t throw back to the mound? Glad to see someone has finally beaten the yips.
I’m not sure I buy Max Scherzer’s reasoning. Yes, he pitched only 10 innings his final two regular season starts with LA, but the team was in the middle of a tight division race and he got fairly lit up in both starts. Even so, he threw around 100 pitches in each of those “short” outings, and other than one rain delay and another start where he didn’t have it, he otherwise pitched into the 7th or later in his other starts with the Dodgers.
His usage wasn’t really any different than before he was traded, and perhaps if he hadn’t struggled in his last two starts, he would have gone deeper in those games. But being an ace, he was given a longer rein as it was. A lesser starter would have pulled from crucial games before reaching 5+ or close to 100 pitches.
Here’s the 2021 game log for Scherzer:
baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=scherma0…
Yeah. It kind of sounds like a weird explanation. Maybe something he told the Mets before they made him the highest paid player in baseball? I hope the Mets do what he says and just pitch him with no breaks. That way people can call him out when he falls apart. It never occurred to him that maybe his body can’t endure everything it used to because his arm has gone under a lot of stress and he’s almost 38 years old?
beers – Look at the number of times he pitched on regular rest with the Dodgers. In 11 starts, he was on regular rest just four times. With the Nats he was on regular rest 9 out of 16 starts, not counting the All-Star break and the two times he skipped a start.
He wants the ball every 5th day, and his stats prove he performs BETTER on normal rest.
Normal rest = 1.69 ERA and .491 OPS
Extra day of rest = 2.97 ERA and .612 OPS
But Scherzer isn’t saying he wasn’t on normal rest. He’s saying he wasn’t pitched deeper into games/pitch counts. Except he was.
I don’t see that in the above article, is there a link you can provide? The one provided in the above article is behind a paywall.
Glad to hear Scherzer say what most of us have known all along, babying starting pitchers with the intention of making them stronger in October often has the opposite effect. It certainly was a disastrous approach for the 2019 Red Sox.
Much has changed in baseball over the past 30 years, but one thing that never changes is the human body. The more it becomes conditioned to less exertion, the worse it will respond. Just like successful long distance runners don’t prepare for marathons by “saving their energy” in the weeks leading up to competition. They actually typically run 50 miles a week over the 4 months leading up to races.
And plenty of pitchers have gone on record as saying if they don’t pitch enough, their performance becomes poor as they tend to overthrow and struggle with control.
Bottom line, the best starting pitchers in MLB history didn’t reach their elite status by being limited to 5 innings a start.
Then he should have pitched better. Or more efficiently. He gave up 11 earned in 10.1 innings to finish his season, throwing about 100 pitchers in each start as well. What do you expect the Dodgers to do, in a super tight division race? Send Scherzer out for another 20-30 pitches when he clearly didn’t have it and one game could (and did) decide the NL West?
Scherzer’s narrative simply doesn’t fit when you look at the game logs. His usage stayed the same, and he pitched deep into games when he was pitching well. His three short starts with LA all were due to high pitch counts in the 5th, and 4-6 runs given up by Max. Except for one rain delay in Philly, which took hours to subside.
Agree totally. He averaged 98.7 pitches per start for Washington and 98 pitches per start for his last five regular-season starts for LA. Plus averaging 102 pitches in his first two post-season starts. So it seems he’s just grasping at straws to explain why Superman was a no-show in Game 6. Closing out the 9th inning of the NLDS was his kryptonite.
EBJ – Scherzer is a lot more intelligent than you portray him to be. He knows when his workload has changed, he’s not dumb.
beers – You’ve given a classic example of misusing stats. Why do you assume the only way to limit a pitcher’s innings is to pull him sooner in games?
Look at his splits based on days of rest between starts.
I’m literally pointing out what he says isn’t accurate. The article says he believes pitching fewer innings is what cost him in the postseason. What were the Dodgers supposed to do? Send him out for the next inning when he’s given up 5 or 6 earned runs already, after 100 pitches? His last two starts were a struggle, and the Dodgers were trying to win the division.
I don’t see anything that says he thought any of it had to do with short rest. I also don’t recall him ever going on short rest, and I watch every game. But he didn’t mention it, so it’s a moot point. The Dodgers ran him out there for right around 100 pitches in every start, other than the one in Philadelphia that was interrupted by rain.
He can say what he wants, and it really doesn’t matter why he had a dead arm, since it appears to be just bad luck rather than overuse or underuse. Unless it was the Game 5 save, of course.
beers – You’re interpreting fewer innings to mean shorter outings, but he doesn’t specifically mention shorter outings. I know he’s gone on record in the past saying he wants to pitch every 5th day, so I will continue to believe all the extra days of rest is what he’s referencing. If you can find a link that says otherwise, I’d be interested in reading it.
The game 5 save was Roberts in panic mode. He had a great bullpen that helped get him 106 regular season wins. It wasn’t as if the bullpen was a weakness on the team, it was a strength and was arguably the best bullpen in MLB all year. A bullpen that had 3 legit closers. But instead Roberts tried again to over manage and it ended up back firing in the long run.
Matzek is hella underrated. dude is a beast. i get scared whenever I see him up in the opposing pen.
Scherzer threw 7 innings in game two of the NLDS. Then insisted to close out game 5, three days later. Then shockingly had nothing left for his NLCS start just three days after that. He pulled the same crap before in Washington. Self inflicted and the managers let it happen.
You won’t see a more high leverage situation and pressure on a pitcher inheriting two runners none out in the post season. When they talk about “clutch”, this is it.
youtube.com/watch?v=V200xmqXb6E
I’ve seen that inning so many times now. What a big moment for Matzek to come through. I have a version of that on my watch later list and I’ve gone back to it many times. It will go down in Braves lore as one of our most important innings.
Am I missing something? How is Clarke Schmidt one of the Yankees’ “more prominent pitching prospects”? I have not seen him pitch, nor do I have really strong familiarity with their system. But a look at his numbers suggests something else.
Schmidt was a 1st round pick back in 2017, taken 16th overall. He was ranked as a top 100 prospect pre-2020 and pre-2021 by Baseball America, Major League Baseball, and Baseball Prospectus. He’s always been an above average pitcher in the minors as well, consistently riding an ERA in the mid to low 3’s. He’s definitely a talented pitcher.
Yes.
Being one of the best prospects is how and he did it by pitching well, getting drafted high and then performing in the minors.
You need to look at different numbers.
I think Scherzer’s arm is shot and he has got nothing.
“A dead arm kept Max Scherzer from pitching in Game Six of the NLDS, which Scherzer believes was due to pitching fewer innings in the lead-up to the postseason.”
My friend and I have been screaming this for years. Maybe the pitchers aren’t pitching enough. Maybe this new structure of several days of rest and then pitching at 100 is too much of a hot/cold approach.
They never did this in the old days. And they don’t do this out in Japan. Yet when the Japanese pitchers come over to the United States they are always getting hurt.
Pitchers in Japan aren’t throwing 95-100 mph either though. They also don’t pitch every 5th day like most of MLB, most teams use a 6 man rotation in NPB. Their pitch count runs higher but they also play less games, with far less travel than in the United States.
You have noticed that humans have figured out how to get higher levels of performance from their bodies haven’t you?
Did you think we suddenly evolved?
Do you think you can push yourself harder, do more but not suffer more injuries as a result?
I can’t figure out what people miss when they fail to accept pushing harder means more problems.
Cool story on Matzek. Thanks.
Max’s explanation has no merit and its code for I just suckered the Mets into giving my dead arm a$$ 120mil to basically watch baseball from the bench once my arm falls off in May 2022.
His contract is already signed and finalized, so why would he now feel the need to make excuses for the dead arm?
BTW – You related to Luis?
The old days of stud pitchers like Jack Morris gutting it out to pitch a 10 inning shutout in the World Series against the Twins may be gone forever. Morris was tired. Morris was fatigued. Morris has pitched a lot of innings that year too.
Dont’s get me wrong, I am a huge Max Scherzer fan.
I just wonder how much the Scherzer situation was “agent driven” versus “potential injury driven”?!
Scherzer was, arguably, pulling himself out of games early in his contract walk year with the Tigers to set himself up for the next contract to the detriment of the Tigers team.
Same thing with the Dodgers in Scherzer’s contract walk year with the Dodgers.
Scherzer could have gutted it out, pitched the Dodgers to a repeat World Series Title and then had the entire offseason to rest.
Just saying….If I was a Dodgers Front Office person or fan, I would be wondering if I make that trade with 20/20 hindsight.