For Max Scherzer and the Dodgers, ‘sour taste’ remains from 2021 playoff elimination
He was a fan favorite, until he wasn’t.
One of the best trade-deadline acquisitions ever, until it all ended with a disappointing postseason failure.
A year and a half later, Max Scherzer still carries conflicting emotions about his three-month stint as a Dodger in 2021.
“That team was built to win the World Series,” the three-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher said Monday. “So when you come up short, that leaves a little sour taste in your mouth.”
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And as Scherzer gets set to face his old club for the first time on Wednesday, when he will take the mound for the New York Mets in their series finale at Dodger Stadium, many in Los Angeles have reflected upon his very up, then very down, Dodgers tenure in a similar way.
“I enjoyed having Max around,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think we all just wish it would have ended differently.”
The ending came in that season’s National League Championship Series, when Scherzer didn’t make a scheduled start in the Dodgers’ Game 6 elimination to the Atlanta Braves because of arm fatigue he reported to the team the previous day.
Standing in front of his locker Monday, Scherzer defended his decision just like he did when it happened.
He said his arm was “fried,” “gassed,” and “overcooked” after three earlier outings in the playoffs, including a ninth-inning save in Game 5 of the National League Division Series against the San Francisco Giants.
“That was one of the best teams I’ve ever been on. Unfortunately, just given how the rest of that season ended, how it unfolded is how it unfolded. It left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. I get it.”
— Max Scherzer on the Dodgers’ 2021 season
He feared the soreness ailing his body — and, in a detail he hadn’t revealed before, his right rotator cuff specifically — could put his long-term career in jeopardy; deeming the risk too great to take, even with the Dodgers’ season hanging in the balance.
“I remember coming in that off day [before Game 6] and playing catch, and Mark [Prior, the Dodgers pitching coach] watching it,” Scherzer said. “I said, ‘I’ll go if you want.’ But watching Walker [Buehler] throw, he was the better option. And that was the choice.”
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The Dodgers ultimately pivoted to Buehler in Game 6, asking their other staff ace to start on short rest for the second time that postseason. He lasted just four innings, giving up four runs. And amid October struggles from a short-handed offense, the Dodgers suffered a 4-2 loss that sealed their upset defeat to an 88-win Atlanta Braves team.
Two seasons on, it all remains a sore subject for both Scherzer and many of his ex-Dodgers teammates — some of whom felt frustration with the situation, according to people with knowledge of the situation granted anonymity to speak freely, that stained what had started as a symbiotic partnership between the team and future Hall of Famer.
“That was one of the best teams I’ve ever been on,” Scherzer said. “Unfortunately, just given how the rest of that season ended, how it unfolded is how it unfolded. It left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. I get it.”
Acquired alongside All-Star shortstop Trea Turner in a blockbuster deadline deal that July, Scherzer initially looked like a savior for a Dodgers pitching staff reeling from the losses of Clayton Kershaw (elbow injury) and Trevor Bauer (on administrative leave after sexual assault allegations).
Scherzer received a raucous ovation in his club debut, earning a win with seven strong innings against the Houston Astros in their first trip to a full-capacity Dodger Stadium following the sign stealing scandal.
“That’s the craziest regular season game I’ve ever pitched,” Scherzer said.
He recorded his 3,000th career strikeout at Chavez Ravine a month later, the same day he carried a perfect game against the San Diego Padres into the eighth inning.
“I was there for at least parts of his Cy Young years,” Turner said late that season. “And, for me, this is as good as I can remember him.”
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Scherzer finished the regular season with a 7-0 record and 1.98 ERA in his 11 starts with the Dodgers, hailed at point one of the greatest deadline acquisitions in the history of Major League Baseball.
Then, he orchestrated his best moment in the decisive fifth game of the NLDS, emerging from the bullpen three days after a 110-pitch start to secure a series-clinching save against the Giants.
“Really getting a taste of the rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants, to go Game 5 with them and get to close out that game, that was an unbelievable moment in my career,” Scherzer said, a wistful smile crossing his face. “There’s still some really good moments of that season I’ll always remember.”
But in the wake of his relief outing, Scherzer said his arm never fully bounced back.
He struggled in Game 2 of the NLCS three days later, beamoning afterward that his arm felt “dead” during the Dodgers’ 5-4 loss in extra innings. Then came the Game 6 start he missed entirely, leading to an early elimination in the Dodgers’ bid to repeat as World Series champions.
Scherzer — who was 37 years old at the time and approaching free agency — didn’t want to second-guess his NLDS workload Monday.
“That’s all coulda, shoulda, woulda,” he said. “When you’re going into Game 5, all chips are on the table. You gotta win that game.”
And despite the frustrations caused by his Game 6 scratch in the NLCS, many with the Dodgers understood his wariness over not feeling 100%.
“When it’s a rotator cuff, when you take a mound, you’re rolling the dice on your career at that point,” Scherzer said.
Those sympathies, however, wore thin a few months later, when Scherzer seemingly blamed some of his arm troubles on the lighter workload he’d received in the Dodgers pitch-count-conscious, six-man rotation.
“I just feel like that lowered my capacity,” Scherzer said in December 2021, contrasting that year’s postseason to what he experienced in the Nationals’ 2019 World Series run. “So when I tried to do the 2019 formula of being able to pitch out of the ‘pen [during the NLDS], my arm wasn’t able to respond.”
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Scherzer, who signed a three-year, $130-million contract with the Mets that same winter, later clarified his comments. He said he didn’t “blame the Dodgers” for his arm fatigue. He acknowledged that “maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough in what I was actually talking about.”
By then, though, the awkwardness between him and his old team — the Dodgers showed interest in re-signing Scherzer, but didn’t come close to matching the Mets’ record-setting annual salary — had already been cemented.
And ahead of Wednesday’s reunion, the good memories of the sides’ lone season together remains overshadowed by an ending they’d both rather forget.
“I don’t put too much thought into it,” Roberts said. “People might think more of it. I don’t. It’s nothing I can change. Nothing we can do about it. So for me to put any more thought into it, I just don’t.”
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