"He wasn't happy," said his wife, Erica May Scherzer. "He works hard and does things a certain way. If he misses two days of training, it's a big deal."
Few would fault Max Scherzer for taking a few days off to celebrate the biggest contract ever awarded to a right-handed pitcher. But Scherzer, 30, is an unrelenting high achiever.
Even though much will be expected of him this season, Scherzer insists it won't change him. This is a man who brings a glove and ball on vacations to play catch to keep his arm fresh. He once set a goal of running a strenuous 1.4-mile trail up Camelback Mountain in Phoenix in 45 minutes, and once he achieved it, set a new goal of 40 minutes, then 35 minutes, until he did it in 30 minutes this offseason.
"Having success on the mound is my No. 1 motivation and, for the most part, my only motivation," Scherzer said over lunch — a sandwich, chips and water — last week. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep having that success and having more success."
Although the desire was there, Scherzer wasn't always successful. The Chesterfield, Missouri, native grew up adoring the St. Louis Cardinals and dreamed of being a shortstop like Ozzie Smith. But because he had such a good arm, he mostly pitched. As a top recruit at Missouri, about 90 minutes from home, Scherzer posted a 5.85 ERA as a freshman.
"He had such an electric arm," said Tony Vitello, then Missouri's pitching coach who now holds the same position at Arkansas. "Everything he did was explosive. We knew he was going to be special. He just needed some development."
Even though Scherzer was Big 12 pitcher of the year as a junior and taken 11th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2006 draft, his development took time. He made his first major league appearance in 2008, retiring 13 straight batters, a record for a relief debut. His next game was a start.
Scherzer's next three years were a mix of good and bad: progress, a 2010 trade to the Detroit Tigers, a brief demotion to the minors, improvement, complacency and his worst professional season in 2011.
Before the 2012 season, he vowed to improve his slider, which he felt was the key to success. Even though his ERA that season was 3.74, his strikeout rate jumped from 8.0 per nine innings to an American League-leading 11.1. A slider paired with a change-up and a mid-90s fastball, delivered from his distinctive three-quarters arm slot, were a deadly combination.
"The biggest thing you notice when you watch him pitch is all the swings and misses he gets on his fastball," Tigers pitching coach Jeff Jones said.
That summer, after the left-handed-heavy Cleveland Indians hit him hard again, Scherzer again sought a way to improve. His sliders, normally about 85 miles per hour to the outside of the plate, kept breaking in to lefties' swings. During a bullpen session, Jones persuaded Scherzer to throw the pitch more slowly. He did and hit the catcher's mitt. Jones told him to do it again but even slower. He did, turned to Jones and smiled: He had a curveball.
"Once I worked on this a couple more times, I took it to the game and saw the results instantly," Scherzer said.
In 2013, with an improved curveball, Scherzer had his finest season yet: a 21-3 record, 2.90 ERA, 240 strikeouts, 214 1/3 innings, an All-Star Game start and the AL Cy Young Award.
Despite Scherzer's career year, the Tigers lost in the American League Championship Series. In fact, from 2011 to 2014, the Tigers averaged nearly 92 wins a season, reached the playoffs twice, including the World Series in 2012, and didn't win a ring. Scherzer and his teammates had a feeling the nucleus of the team, many approaching free agency, couldn't stick together. Before his final season in Detroit, he turned down a six-year, $144-million offer.
At the advice of his agent, Scott Boras, Scherzer took out an insurance policy to protect himself against injury. If he got hurt, preventing him from receiving a better offer than the one he turned down, Scherzer would receive a tax-free $40 million payout. It cost $750,000.
"It was peace of mind," said Scherzer, who was an all-star selection again in 2014. "From a financial standpoint, I was going to be comfortable no matter what happened. I didn't have to sit here and think I had to pitch for a contract or pitch better for this. I had one singular goal when I walked into the clubhouse and that was to win."
This spring, he is working on yet another new pitch, a cutter, which he may or may not use during the season. Former Arizona teammate (and former National) Dan Haren once told Scherzer it took him three years to master his cutter. Scherzer doesn't like talking about the pitch because he doesn't know yet if it will be good enough to use, but Haren's words resonated with Scherzer: "Keep experimenting and find a way to get better."
Scherzer's record-breaking contract also hasn't changed the way he approaches the game or his health. Scherzer hasn't had a major shoulder or elbow injury in his seven major league seasons. He doesn't eat fast food or drink soda. He runs and trains with the same resolve as he pitches. He is unfailingly positive.
"My goal is to win," he said. "To do that, I need to be healthy. I know what I need to do to keep doing it. I'm not going to go out there with the mentality 'I have to prove everybody wrong' or 'Am I worth this contract?' No. It takes you away from what you're doing on the mound. That's not baseball. That's contract. My motivations are strictly baseball and winning. Nothing is going to deter that."
In the clubhouse, Scherzer has been the same as always. Teammates see him as intelligent. He studied finance at Missouri and runs the clubhouse fantasy sports pools. "He's a nerd at heart because he's all about numbers and stats," Tigers catcher Bryan Holaday said."He loves anything that involves that." Scherzer is also intense. He was known to swear loudly at himself during bullpen sessions. "The smiley guy on interviews is not Max on game day," Vittelo said. "He's looking to gut you."
But more than anything, Scherzer is known as a goofy guy who likes to have fun. Within days of reporting to Nationals spring training, he had already pranked Manager Matt Williams with bulletin board material involving a photo from "Dumb and Dumber" and Williams in an embarassing pose. Scherzer designed it himself. No one is spared from his teasing: his family, his wife's family, her friends. He's even working on a rap about Jayson Werth and his reckless driving conviction.
"He puts so much time into busting everybody's [chops] and wanting to have fun with everybody. He's a little [pest] but he's such a fun one," Erica said. Secretly, she said, she hopes one of her husband's new teammates gets back at him. "He really brings in such a team feel when he does that. He can be so serious on the mound and so intense. And then he gets off the mound and he's this easygoing, fun guy who you can kick back and drink a beer with and hang."
Beneath the goofiness is sincerity. On a recent afternoon, Scherzer was part of three different conversations within 30 minutes. One moment, he was chatting with a group of relievers at one end of the clubhouse. The next, he was regaling catchers Sandy Leon and Jose Lobaton with stories about former Tigers teammate Miguel Cabrera. And before he left for the day, he overheard a reporter interviewing reliever Jerry Blevins about his interests and plopped down on a nearby stool to listen because he wanted to learn about his teammates.
That is what defines Scherzer. He is restless. A new team is fun, a new league of opponents is a test and a new city is exciting. He is ready for the challenge.
"In sports you never stay the same," he said. "You either get better or you get worse and I'm focusing on ways to get better."
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