“I’m a high-adrenaline pitcher.”
That was an unnecessary admission coming from someone whose demeanor throughout a Hall of Fame career has earned him the nickname “Mad Max.” But Max Scherzer’s intent last Saturday was to explain why his fastball velocity had been in the low nineties during rehab outings after averaging a tick faster last season.
Scherzer’s heater reached a game-high 94.3 mph on the second batter last Sunday afternoon, in the ace’s long-awaited season debut for the Texas Rangers. He threw the pitch on a 0–2 count, and even though it crossed the plate well above the strike zone, Kansas City Royals phenom Bobby Witt Jr. (son of former Rangers pitcher Bobby Witt) chased it for the game’s first strikeout.
The game was Scherzer’s first official appearance since leaving game three of last year’s World Series with a back injury that led to surgery in December. His rehab was interrupted by a nerve issue that had the 39-year-old wondering if his pitching arm would ever be healthy again.
All he did on Sunday afternoon was retire his first thirteen batters and give up just one hit (with no walks and four strikeouts) in five innings. He left the game with a three-run lead; the Rangers went on to win 4–0.
Before Sunday’s outing, Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said Scherzer was told he didn’t have to go out and pitch like a Cy Young Award winner. But that’s what Scherzer did. “I’ll be honest, we didn’t know exactly where he was,” Bochy said. “His first start back, to throw the ball like that . . . Just an incredible job what he did.”
Scherzer, predictably amped, said, “It was fun just to get back out there and compete on the mound and be in sync in the game, with the flow of the game.”
My guess is the majority of the 35,762 fans at Globe Life Field on Sunday were also amped, energized not only by the three-time Cy Young winner’s comeback but also by the return of a Rangers offense that has rarely resembled the run-generating powerhouse that delivered last year’s World Series title. The Rangers’ pitching staff is also on a run of 22 consecutive scoreless innings, their longest streak since September 2016.
The 37–40 Rangers left town on Sunday evening on a four-game winning streak, matching the longest run of success they’ve had so far in a middling season. Last year’s team had five longer streaks, topped by an eight-gamer, en route to ninety wins. These Rangers stood six and a half games out of first place in the American League West division after trailing by ten only five days earlier. They’re four and a half games back in the crowded race for a wild card playoff berth.
Last season, the Rangers never fell more than three games behind the division lead, and they clinched a wild card on the season’s penultimate day. They then went on an unprecedented postseason run, going 11–0 on the road en route to the franchise’s first World Series championship.
Last year’s Rangers led the American League in runs scored, batting average, walks, home runs, on-base percentage (OBP), slugging percentage, and on-base plus slugging (OPS). Through Sunday, this season’s squad stood eighth in batting and runs, seventh in walks, eleventh in homers, and ninth in OBP and OPS. The largest individual batting drop-off has come from 2023 All-Star Adolis García. The outfielder belted a career-high 39 homers and drove in 107 runs while hitting .245. This season, his batting average has sunk to .218 and he’s on pace for 29 homers and 81 RBIs.
The team caught a bad break just four games into this season, when All-Star third baseman Josh Jung was hit by a pitch that broke his wrist. Texas has missed his power—he homered 23 times last season, as a rookie—but Josh Smith has filled in more than admirably. Previously a utility player with a .197 career batting average, Smith has already topped his career best in home runs with seven, and he’s currently tied for fifth in the American League in batting (.300), third in OBP (.395) and eighth in OPS (.869).
Jung could return to the active roster this week. On Saturday, while speaking with reporters, he discussed the team’s 2024 struggles. “One thing I don’t think that gets talked about enough is you go deep into the playoffs, and you play into November, and you look around our locker room and there’s not many guys that have ever really done that before,” he said. “I think the short offseason, not having the full amount of time, I think it just kind of weighs on you really during the season. I wouldn’t say that everyone’s fatigued, but if you look back at it that we played a month longer than anyone ever has before except maybe Corey [Seager, who has played in three World Series]. We’re all just kind of dealing with that in our own ways.”
MLB champions whose postseason runs began with in the wild card round, such as the Rangers, tend to have drop-offs in the following season. Since baseball first expanded its postseason field in 1995, the Rangers were the eighth wild card team to win it all. Of the previous seven, two made it back to the playoffs the following season. Only one advanced beyond the wild card stage—the 2012 St. Louis Cardinals, a year after they narrowly defeated Ron Washington’s Rangers in a seven-game World Series heartbreaker. No championship team, wild card or not, has won back-to-back titles since the New York Yankees completed a three-peat in 2000. That’s the longest such drought in World Series history (first played in 1903).
If the Rangers manage to turn around their season and keep the Commissioner’s Trophy in North Texas, they’ll have to overcome history and an array of playoff opponents.
After his winter back surgery, Scherzer wasn’t expected to return until midseason, but he surprised fans in late April when he said he was targeting an early May comeback date. Then came a handful of setbacks including his nerve issues.
On Sunday afternoon, though, that all seemed like ancient history.
Scherzer’s postgame give-and-take with the media included being asked if he lobbied to remain in the game during an animated discussion with Bochy and pitching coach Mike Maddux. “Everything from a baseball standpoint was telling me to go back out there,” Scherzer said.
Then again, he’ll need to see how his arm responds to the wear and tear of reentering the Rangers rotation and starting every fifth game. He said he accepted the coaches’ decision that he’d gone far enough for his first time back. “I think there’s a notion out there that I always fight to stay in ball games, and there’s some pretty good clips of me doing that,” Scherzer said, grinning. “What people don’t understand is for every time that happens, there’s probably twenty other times where I’m actually telling the manager: ‘I’m coming out. I need to come out of the ball game.’ ”
A seamless return isn’t a given. Scherzer spent time on the injured list twice with the New York Mets in 2022, and last season he sat out the closing weeks with a muscle strain. “I have to make the next start on five days,” he told reporters over the weekend. “Hopefully my arm responds. Hopefully I don’t go backwards.”
The Rangers are also eager to welcome two other sidelined starters back to the pitching rotation, both after Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery. Tyler Mahle, who was signed as a free agent last December, is expected back in July. Jacob deGrom, who had his second Tommy John done last June, when he was only six starts into the first season of a five-year, $185 million free agent contract, is expected back in August.
Heading into this season with an injury-depleted pitching staff, the Rangers have faced criticism from fans over ownership’s decision to allow starter Jordan Montgomery to leave via free agency after his incredible three-month run in a Texas uniform. Montgomery registered a terrific 2.79 ERA in eleven regular-season starts after the Rangers acquired him from St. Louis in late July. He then pitched even better in the playoffs, with three wins and an ERA of 2.16.
After those postseason heroics, Montgomery held out for a big payday, which he got two days before opening day, when he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Rangers’ 2023 World Series opponents. His ERA this season is 5.71, and his walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP) is up from 1.094 to 1.571.
Bochy has mentioned multiple times this season that the first of his four Series-winning squads—the 2010 San Francisco Giants, who made the Rangers’ first-ever trip to the Series an ultimately disappointing one—won their division after trailing by seven and a half games on July 4. “I plan to get to the postseason,” Bochy said last week. “That’s where my head is, and I think that’s where the players’ heads are, too.”
A loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday snapped the Rangers’ winning streak, but between Scherzer’s promising return from injury, Mahle’s and DeGrom’s plans to rejoin the team, and signs that Garcia may emerge from his hitting slump, Texas fans might finally have reason to believe in Bochy’s postseason pledge.
