Max Scherzer

They don’t call him “Mad Max” for nothing.

Widely regarded as one of the most dominant right-handed pitchers in Major League Baseball in the first part of the 21st century, Max Scherzer’s competitive drive and ferocious style of play have made him a legend among his teammates and fans. Consider:

• He pitched with a broken nose and black eye, one day after he was hit by a ball in batting practice. (Actually he didn’t just pitch; he posted seven scoreless innings and 10 strikeouts.)
• He is notorious for his colorful language when a manager tries to take him out of a game that he thinks he should stay in. (“I thought he was going to kill me. It was great,” Toronto Blue Jays manager Jon Schneider said about one such encounter during the 2025 playoffs.)
• In the 2015 season he was the architect of a bizarre Washington Nationals tradition that involved him dousing teammates in chocolate syrup after walk-off wins.
• He started game seven of the 2019 World Series just days after being scratched from game five with a neck injury that was so painful that he couldn’t even dress himself.
• We haven’t even mentioned yet that he has two different colored eyes (one brown and one blue) due to heterochromia, a condition that only adds to his mystique.

Early years

Max Scherzer was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1984 to Brad and Jan Scherzer, who had met as students at the University of Missouri. Max displayed a love of baseball from an early age that manifested itself both on the diamond and in the classroom. Of Cardinals pitching great Bob Gibson, a 40-year-old Scherzer would recall: “For me as a kid, growing up, [Gibson] was one of my idols. I did book reports on him left and right.”

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Scherzer’s younger brother, Alex, with whom he was very close, died by suicide in 2012. “He was in a position in his life to have so much success,” Scherzer said at the time. “It was just a tragedy that he wasn’t able to do that.”

While Scherzer’s first love was baseball, at Parkway Central High School, he demonstrated the competitive streak that would be his hallmark, playing forward on the basketball team and starting as quarterback on the football team as a freshman. Oh yes, and he pitched too.

Scherzer played college ball at the University of Missouri where he was coached by Tony Vitello, who worked to get Scherzer to pitch with more control. In Scherzer, Vitello saw not the greatest natural talent he had ever coached, but something else: “He’s got a very, very powerful brain.…The guy’s got a great arm, but the best weapon he has is that brain.”

Professional career

After playing three seasons of college ball, Scherzer was drafted in the first round of the 2006 MLB draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. Many scouts thought that despite Vitello’s efforts at Missouri, Scherzer’s body would not endure his violent pitching motion over the long haul. One who disagreed was Mike Rizzo, then the Diamondbacks head scout, who, like Vitello, saw something more than pitching mechanics, later saying, “We were calling him Mad Max in the draft room.”

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Almost a decade later, when Rizzo was general manager for the Washington Nationals, he would reunite with Mad Max for what would become the greatest stretch of Scherzer’s career. But for Scherzer there would be years, doubts, and two more teams before landing in the city that would define his legacy.

Scherzer made his big-league debut as an Arizona Diamondback on April 29, 2008, as a reliever. He retired all 13 batters he faced, striking out seven of them. The next day, the Diamondbacks promoted him to their starting rotation. He pitched for the Diamondbacks for the rest of the 2008 and all of the 2009 season before being traded to the Detroit Tigers. Ultimately, Scherzer was let go because manager Josh Byrnes worried about the durability of his arm. “Obviously a terrible decision,” Byrnes told The Washington Post years later.

During five seasons with the Tigers, Scherzer grew from a solid starting pitcher to an ace. During these years, he played in his first World Series (2012; the Tigers lost to the San Francisco Giants), pitched alongside his fellow future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, and struck out 200 batters for the first time (2012).

But it was in 2013 that Scherzer became Scherzer. On June 28, 2013, he posted a win in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays. (A pitcher gets a “win” if he is the pitcher of record when his team takes the lead for good in a game.) It was the 12th game of the season that he had started; it was the 12th game he had won. It was a team record in a season that would see him be named the starting pitcher in his first All-Star Game, win his first Cy Young Award, and become the season’s only 20-game winner. He pitched another stellar season for the Tigers in 2014.

But at the start of 2015, Scherzer signed a seven-year contract worth $210 million to pitch for Rizzo’s Washington Nationals. He would almost immediately prove his worth: recording two no-hitters in the 2015 season, including one that would have been a perfect game if not for a hit batter in the ninth inning. On May 11, 2016, Scherzer set the tone for the season, striking out 20 batters in a game against his old team, the Tigers. In baseball history, only three other pitchers had struck out 20: Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, and Kerry Wood. At season’s end, Scherzer was awarded his second Cy Young.

The 2017 and 2018 seasons were no less memorable. In 2017 he earned his third Cy Young Award. As a measure of that milestone: only 11 pitchers in baseball history have won three Cy Youngs; only four have won more than three. In what was overall a disappointing 2018 season for the Nationals, Scherzer provided a bright spot, becoming only the sixth pitcher since 1900 to strike out 300 batters in a season.

For all the awards and individual honors, Scherzer still had not been part of a World Series-winning team. In 2019 that changed. Scherzer was the pitcher on opening day of the 2019 Washington Nationals season. He would also be the starting pitcher for the last game of the season—game seven of the World Series. Along the way, the Nationals and Scherzer would struggle. The team started the season 19–31, making a playoff run seem almost impossible a third of the way through the season. In addition to the broken nose and black eye, Scherzer struggled with back issues in the second half of the season.

But nothing prepared him, or his team, for Scherzer being so incapacitated with neck spasms that he could not pitch in game five of a World Series tied at two games apiece with the Houston Astros. He told the news media that the pain was unlike anything he had experienced before. “This blew up on me to the point where, like I said, I can’t move.” Doctors gave him a cortisone shot that they were confident would address the issue, but it would take several days to work. Scherzer might be able to pitch in game seven of the series, if there was one. The Nationals lost game five and went to Houston for game six with another ace, Stephen Strasburg, on the mound. Strasburg delivered a win, and Scherzer started game seven. He pitched five gutsy innings, allowing two runs. He kept his team close enough for a rally that made them World Series champions. Scherzer didn’t get the win; he did get the ring. In the 2019 postseason, the Nationals did not lose a game in which Scherzer pitched.

Scherzer continued to pitch for the Nationals through the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and the start of the 2021 season. The Nationals traded Scherzer at the 2021 trading deadline to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was wearing Dodger blue when he became just the 19th pitcher in Major League history to record 3,000 strikeouts in a career.

Scherzer pitched for the New York Mets in 2022 and 2023 before being traded to the Texas Rangers to finish out the 2023 season, which saw the Rangers win the World Series, and to pitch again in 2024. His stints with those teams included some of his previous greatness but also featured long periods when he could not play because of injury. In 2024, he pitched just 43 1/3 innings, the fewest of his career. Those who early on in his career had questioned if Scherzer could be durable had been proven wrong, but as he entered his 40s, questions about chronic pain and an aging body dogged Scherzer.

In 2025 he signed to play with the Toronto Blue Jays, and his play during much of the season did little to quiet the questions. Early in the season, a thumb injury had even him considering retirement. His earned run average in September, while he battled shoulder issues, was an atrocious 10.20. But when the Blue Jays made it to the World Series against the Dodgers and needed a starting pitcher for a decisive game seven, manager Jon Schneider called on Scherzer. He pitched 4 1/3 innings, allowing one run, and keeping his team in the game. The Dodgers went on to win the game and the series, but 41-year-old Scherzer had one takeaway from the experience: “I still can do this,” he told The New York Times in November 2025.

Apparently the Blue Jays agreed; they signed Scherzer to a contract for the 2026 season.

Despite being sidelined for part of the year with injuries, Scherzer made history in August 2026 when he surpassed legendary pitcher Walter Johnson recording his 3,516th career strikeout for the 10th spot on the list of pitchers with most strikeouts.