Max Scherzer was never exactly broken last year, but he was never quite complete, either. Though he won his second straight National League Cy Young Award, Scherzer battled finger trouble and neck issues and calf soreness and hamstring trouble, all of which combined to interrupt his routine, but never knock him out completely.
But now, eight months after he was unable to start Opening Day because of that fracture in his knuckle, two months after his calamitous showing in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, endured on a sore hamstring, Scherzer is right.
“I feel like I’m truly 100 percent,” Scherzer said Saturday at the annual Winterfest, held at the Convention Center in downtown D.C. “I was kind of battling some nagging injuries throughout the year — nothing that would truly knock me out, but just enough to constantly have to be paying attention to stuff. But once it got to the offseason, finally I felt 100 percent healthy. I’m still playing catch all the way through. It feels great to be throwing a baseball 100 percent healthy and actually be able to go through my full offseason regimen and not be inhibited in any way.”
Scherzer, for whom “creature of habit” is an apt description, had to modify his offseason plans last year. The stress fracture in his knuckle prevented him from throwing a baseball until spring training, which is not normally his style, and he spent much of his early throwing program using lacrosse balls or tennis balls or whatever didn’t hurt. Then, he spent spring training ramping up quickly, targeting the first week of the season. He hit that target, but was plagued by more little nicks and bruises than at any point in his career, raising real questions about whether or not the 33-year-old might be headed for decline.
Instead, Scherzer laughed off the notion that the injuries fell into any kind of pattern, and perhaps with good reason.
“Doing the neck exercises and sleeping on the pillow prevents the neck injury. Not throwing down and away to Travis Shaw prevents your calf [injury]. Then coming off of [the calf] prevents the hamstring injury,” said Scherzer, asked how to avoid similar problems moving forward. “So I guess that’s what I learned.”
So Scherzer won’t alter his training regimen to avoid those injuries. His offseason regimen has changed, however, to include more “changing diapers and wiping butts.” His wife, Erica, gave birth to the couple’s first child in November, a girl named Brooklyn who Scherzer says looks like him — “which is crazy to even think about.”
Brooklyn’s arrival, plus that of his third Cy Young Award, injected nuance into what might otherwise have been a rather depressing offseason. Scherzer has spent winters stewing over painful playoff exits before, but has had little time to do that, particularly after adding that Cy Young to his resume — which looking increasingly Cooperstown-ready.
“It just kind of helped me forget about 2017 and how that ended,” Scherzer said. “At least right now when I think about baseball, it’s happy.”
Initially, as Scherzer paced around the clubhouse hunting for some explanation for what happened in Game 5, baseball was not a happy thought. That loss cost Dusty Baker his job as Nationals manager, something Scherzer said he understands, difficult as it might be.
“Any time you don’t meet your expectations, that’s what can happen to your manager. It’s an unfortunate situation, but this is baseball. That’s what happens when you play the game at the highest level,” Scherzer said. “Decisions like that can get made.”
But Scherzer pointed out, as he did after Matt Williams’s firing, that players are used to change like this. They change coaches regularly in the minor leagues and below. They often need less coaching than reminders of what they did well to begin with. Scherzer said he won’t really get to know pitching coach Derek Lilliquist until June, when “you have a few bad starts, he’s made a few bad decisions, I’ve made a few bad decisions, and you start placing blame on each other.” Scherzer was joking, of course, but his point is clear. For veterans in the Nationals’ clubhouse — and he might be the most outspoken of them all now that Jayson Werth is gone — the coaching change will be more of a tweak to their everyday life than a full-fledged overhaul.
“This is just another opportunity to learn from a different set of eyes and a different mind-set. Someone who’s been across the diamond from me and has had to prepare against me can now share what he sees and what little ticks I do have,” Scherzer said. “This is an opportunity to kind of learn about ourselves and get better. As much as it sucks to lose your manager and part of your coaching staff, you have to look at it as glass half full and get better.”
Scherzer wouldn’t reveal his plans to get better, but he seems to have one.
“You guys will have to watch,” he said, explaining that he could not reveal exactly what will be different next season because the hitters read these things, too. Scherzer has been known to add a pitch to his arsenal now and then, not tell anyone, then unveil it in-season. Perhaps he will do so again this year. Perhaps a healthy offseason is all the improvement he needs. Considering the way his 2017 season went, perhaps he doesn’t even need that.