Max Scherzer on staying ’95’, his 365-pound squats, and a New York Mets arrival: Pitcher details his ‘deep dives’

SAN DIEGO, CA - AUGUST 26: Max Scherzer #31 of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitches during the third inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park on August 26, 2021 in San Diego, California.  (Photo by Denis Poroy/Getty Images)
By Tim Britton
Feb 7, 2022

In an ideal world, Max Scherzer would be a week away from making the short drive from his home in Jupiter, Fla., to Port St. Lucie, reporting to spring training for the Mets for the first time.

Instead, Scherzer will still be at home, continuing to prep for his first season with the Mets despite an owners’ lockout that has extended into its third month. Like his new teammate Francisco Lindor, Scherzer is a member of the Players Association’s executive committee, meaning he’s as well-versed as any player in the negotiations between the union and owners.

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“The business will take care of itself,” Scherzer told The Athletic late last week by phone from Jupiter. “Right now, seeing how the business of the game has transpired, us as players, we recognize what we’re trying to do here to make the game itself better. Whatever happens, happens. But we’re ready to go whenever we do come to an agreement.”

In the midst of that rancor, just how is Scherzer ensuring he’s ready to go whenever an agreement is reached?

“You’ve got to enjoy the offseason,” he said. “I’m doing the same things I’ve been doing since I was 23 years old.”

Indeed, Scherzer is getting ready for his 15th major-league season at age 37. His average fastball velocity when he debuted as a 22-year-old in 2008 was 94.6 miles per hour. Last season, it was 94.4. How?

In a lengthy interview with The Athletic, Scherzer discussed his offseason training in broad terms, how he knows when he can and can’t pitch, and how tough it was when he realized he had to give up squats. This interview has been lightly edited, condensed and occasionally annotated.

How much have you had to refine the amount of stuff you do or the order in which you do it, the point in the offseason you do it? Or is it really, “This is the plan I built at a certain age, and I can still do almost all of that?”

Yeah, try to do it, and always push your limits. Always push as hard as you can. I have a “No pain, no gain” type of attitude when I look at offseason training. I’m trying to make sure I feel sore the next day. If I don’t feel sore, I don’t feel like I did enough.

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Sign me up as a “More is more” guy.

At what point in your career did you feel good about your offseason routine? I imagine earlier you tinkered with it a little bit more to figure out what worked for you and what didn’t.

I really haven’t tinkered with it. I’ve always believed in it. A lot of what I do is what I did at the University of Missouri with the strength coach there, Coach (Scott) Bird.1 That’s where I really made transformative progress as a baseball player and really saw the benefits of weightlifting, running, conditioning. That accelerated my career and really got me going, and I’ve basically been doing that ever since.

There’s little things I take in, that I’ve added and subtracted throughout the years, but the core of what I do is coming from how I trained at Missouri. It’s been working this whole time, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

1He’s done a lot to make himself what he is,” Tony Vitello, an assistant at Missouri during Scherzer’s time there, told The Athletic’s Rustin Dodd. “It’s not just arm strength.”

What’s it like when you realize there’s something that doesn’t work for you anymore and you have to do something different?

I had to finally admit I can’t squat anymore. That was a frustrating process. It was coming into spring training (a few years ago). From my history squatting, I would always try to really squat heavy, to really get down and get up to where I was basically doing four sets of eight and really on that last set trying to get the weight up as high as possible. In spring training, I would try to get to 365 — that was my number. That was my line in the sand, and that takes from December 1 all the way to March 10 to get to that point.

As I was progressing and doing that, I was noticing I was getting little tweaks that would keep me from continuing to go on. And so I’d have to go to the training room, take care of my body, and they’d say I probably shouldn’t be squatting anymore. I’d say, “I know, I know,” but then I’d feel good and go back to the squat rack and get — I don’t want to say hurt or injured — I’d just tweak my body again. So I’d be out for a couple days.

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It happened a second time, so I thought that I’d be really careful, take a week off, and I remember feeling absolutely perfect going in, thinking “I’m gonna do this.” And then a third time I hurt my body again. So finally I was done. I went back to the trainer, asked them to fix me one more time and promised I wouldn’t squat again. So that was it.

That seems like such a hard line to find and, as a pitcher, you have to do it all the time — to know when you’re dealing with something you can pitch through versus something you shouldn’t pitch through. How have you realized over time where the hard line is that you shouldn’t push any further with something?

For me, the line is when I can tell that I’m getting through the baseball. You can be injured and if you can somehow get out there and still get through the baseball, you can go through that injury and pitch. That’s my line in the sand: If I feel like I can get through the baseball, I’m going to take the ball.

But, if you start feeling yourself coming around the ball, you can see the ball flight is not the same, maybe the velo is down — there’s a thousand different things that can tell you you’re not getting through the baseball. When that happens, that’s my line of saying I can’t go. That’s happened plenty of times as well.

The reason I know that stems all the way back to my time at Missouri, my junior year right before the season. Living in college, we all lived in duplexes, and trying to go to my buddy’s next door, I slammed the door on my finger and cut my middle finger. I missed the first start, but it took about 10 days to get through that. As it was healing, I realized I could throw the baseball; it was just pain on my fingertip. And if it’s just pain on my fingertip, I can go.

So I took the ball, went back out there. I was completely ignoring the pain. It’s pain on my fingertip, not my shoulder. After two starts of pitching with a compromised finger like that, I developed bicep tendinitis. I had a major scare. Put it like this: I knew I wasn’t 100 percent, but I put my arm slot in a compromised position, and I almost blew out my shoulder because of doing that. Still to this day, if you take an MRI of my shoulder, you can still see this tiny speck of my labrum from that one time I pitched at Mizzou with an injured finger. So I got a wake-up call at 21 years old of how dangerous it can be if you’re trying to pitch through an injury and develop bicep tendinitis because of that. I’ll never forget that.

And I remember the feeling I had when I was doing that, and looking back on it, I was getting around the baseball. The moment you’re coming around the baseball, that puts your arm in a compromised position. That was the reason I had that injury. And so I’ve always held on to that tidbit of information from that time, understanding you have to be completely honest with yourself of how you’re getting through the baseball.

The moment you can’t get through the baseball, you’re not allowed to pitch. That’s been my guiding light ever since. For me, that’s still my line in the sand here now at 37 years old.2

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2 “What separates him from almost anybody is that he knows his body as well or better than anyone I’ve ever been around,” Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo told The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli. “He knows how to fix his own ailments.”

You’re talking to a pitching layman. When you say “getting through the baseball,” is that a feel thing that you know down pat by this point?

Yeah. I’ve had hamstring injuries, and I might not have my legs, but I can still get through my legs and at my release point feel myself get through the baseball. I’ve had a lot of — how should I put it, dings? I’ve had a lot of different ailments that have arisen over the years but have not affected my ability to get through the baseball. That’s how I know I can pitch, is when you’re throwing that baseball and you get through the baseball to create that backspin and life on the baseball that you naturally do.

You’ll see it in the ball flight. If I’m trying to throw a fastball down and away (to a right-handed hitter), and I release that ball and I have the feel to know it should probably end up down and away, and it consistently misses by a foot arm-side, I can see that. Or it could be I’m trying to hit that down-and-away fastball and I pull it because of a different injury. You know when you’re getting through the baseball by your fingertips. You know when you throw good pitches and where they should end up. The moment they don’t end up where they should, that’s when you know you’re not getting through the baseball.

How regimented are you in the offseason? Do you start the same time each year and work through it the same way?

Yeah, for the most part. It’s pretty common for most guys. Typically, if you’re reporting around February 15 and your first game is March 1, you start working backwards. For me, you start throwing bullpens in February. February 1 is a date you circle within a few days of throwing your first bullpen. If that’s your first bullpen, you’ve got to start ramping up your throwing January 1. January 1 is a big day for everybody. As long as you hit those dates, you know where you’re at physically on those dates, it allows you to make it to Opening Day.

So the next question has to be, in a year like this where the lockout looks like it’s going to throw off that timing pattern, do you have to change at all or are you right now still building up the way you would as if spring training were definitely starting (Feb. 15)?

Yeah, I’m just going to go. I’m just going to build my arm up. I don’t know to what capacity. I don’t know how long the lockout’s going to go. But if COVID showed us anything, it showed us that you have just as much danger not pitching as pitching. I’d rather just get out there and build my arm up and be ready at any point in time, so that way whenever the lockout does end, it’s much easier to transition to spring training at that point.

I don’t want to sit idle and do nothing until we end the lockout. I feel like then that would be trying to ramp up too quick. It’s easier on your body if you’re already at a high level of pitching. My body is used to pitching for eight months when you factor in the postseason. My routines and everything, I’m used to pitching eight months.

What 2020 showed us, when we’re only pitching three or four months, that’s not always a good thing. That rest wasn’t necessarily good for everybody. There could be a lot of dangers because of that. For me, looking at this lockout, it is what it is. From a training standpoint, I’m ramping up to go no matter what.

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Did you feel differently throughout last season because you were coming off a year in which you only pitched for a few months and not the full 162?

It was something I was aware of. I didn’t necessarily feel different. Going back to last year, I was dealing with a lot of nagging lower-leg injuries. I didn’t have my legs underneath me quite the same way, and so that was my major concern last year in 2021. But I was also very cognizant that 2020 was short; I’d had this huge innings reduction. And I paid attention to anything that was going on with my arm and to really be careful.

I did a deep dive on this. Even in 2020, I offered up, “Do I need to go pitch instructs to get my innings up?” I’m a product of innings jumps capped at 30 innings. I threw 110, then 140 in the minor leagues, then 170 in my first year in the majors, and then got to 200.3 I did the jumps the right way. I really do believe in those. I think that really does help young arms. When you’re a young pitcher in the major leagues going through those jumps, to do it like that is very wise, I think. I feel like it allows you to build a foundation for your arm, your arm care and your body as you transition to try to be a 200-inning pitcher. Being a 200-inning pitcher in a five-day rotation, that’s just not the same as pitching once a week in college. It takes years to be able to develop that durability.

For me, it was more having conversations with young pitchers and young arms saying it’s really dangerous what happened to you guys last year of only throwing 12 starts and 80 innings or whatever it was and then trying to go back to throwing 30 starts and 180 innings. Things can get sideways with your arm really fast this year, and if they do, understand you’ve got to pull the parachute and get out of there; 2021 was not the year to try to be a hero. You really have to be cautious with your arm, and not only that, (but) be cautious in 2022 as you continue to build back up.

We looked at it and did enough diving that, because I’d been built up and I’d had enough years of pitching 200 innings, we collectively as the Nationals didn’t think that I needed to go throw instructs or do anything like that. I could go into my offseason program and still be fine for 2021.4

3 Scherzer threw 80 innings in his junior year at Missouri, 90 2/3 in his first professional season in 2007, 133 in 2008, when he made his major-league debut, 175 in his first full big-league season in 2009 and finally 210 2/3 in 2010 as a full-fledged starter.

4 Scherzer jumped from 67 1/3 innings in 2020 to 196 in 2021, and he was as effective as ever down the stretch for the Dodgers. He did, however, get scratched from his scheduled Game 6 start in the NLCS because, in his words, he’d “overcooked” his arm. In his introductory news conference with the Mets, Scherzer said his reduced workload in the final two months of the season, in which seven of his 11 starts for Los Angeles came with an extra day of rest, had left him less prepared for the postseason workload than he expected. He later clarified to the Los Angeles Times that he didn’t blame the Dodgers in any way for that; he thought he could pitch on the same schedule as he had for the Nationals in their 2019 World Series run.

You said you can still look at 2022 as being impacted by 2020. You threw 196 innings counting the postseason last year. Do you feel like, for you, it’s a full-go, 200-plus innings this season?

Yeah. I didn’t have risk factors telling me that going back to 200 or 220 innings was going to be a major risk factor for myself, because I had built my body up over the years. A one-year anomaly was going to mean less to me than a younger arm.

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Now for the younger arms, that statement is true. And it’s true for 2022, because if you’re a young arm and you are a guy that went from 70 innings to 190, that type of jump is a red flag for young arms. That’s something to be seen. Whether that really manifests itself out or not, we’ll see. But no one knows for sure.5

5 For what it’s worth, a few different pitchers for the Mets had big innings jumps last season. Taijuan Walker threw 159 innings after tossing 53 1/3 in 2020 — and a total of 67 1/3 innings from 2018 through 2020. Tylor Megill compiled 130 innings, nearly 60 more than he’d thrown in 2019. He didn’t pitch in games in 2020 because of the pandemic.

“That’s the tough part about workloads and innings limits, is no one really knows,” Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said in the final week of the season. “You can be perfect and hit on your goals and bad things happen the next year. No one really knows what 2020 is going to hold. There could be residual effects into next year. It’s just one of those things where we try to do the best we can from a recovery standpoint, understanding where they’re at in the moment, where they’ve been in the last three weeks and where we want them the next three weeks.”

There have been times throughout your career where people doubted you could stay healthy with your delivery. Pitchers in their 30s typically lose velocity. I did a story on Jacob deGrom adding velocity in his 30s, and you were the other pitcher adding velocity in your 30s.6 How proud are you of the way you’ve been able to keep your body performing at this level?

It’s just a culmination of training, doing everything I can to push my body to be the best. The velo, I’ve lost a little bit of the top-end velo, but I’ve also increased the bottom end. I might not hit 99 anymore, but there’s fewer 91 mph fastballs, so my average velocity stays the same.7 I’m much more consistent from the first pitch through the last pitch, with less peaks and valleys throughout a game.

6 From that deGrom story, of the best 15 pitchers of the last 15 years, only deGrom, Scherzer and Cole Hamels increased their average fastball velocity from age 28 to 33.

7 This chart from Baseball Savant of every fastball Scherzer has thrown shows how the range in his fastball velocity has diminished over time.

As recently as 2014, one in five Scherzer fastballs clocked in under 93 mph. Last year, one in 33 fastballs was under 93.

You said at the very start that you have to enjoy the offseason. Have you always enjoyed the offseason or is that something you came to appreciate over time?

It’s just easy to make excuses and not put in the work. It’s very easy to make excuses to cut some corners, for lack of a better term. You don’t have the game going on right in front of you, so it’s easy not to do everything you need to do in the offseason.

Yeah, there are days it stinks. You wake up, you’re sore, you hurt, and you’ve got to go back at it. That’s just the reality of it.

(Photo: Denis Poroy / Getty Images)

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Tim Britton

Tim Britton is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the New York Mets. He has covered Major League Baseball since 2009 and the Mets since 2018. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent seven seasons on the Red Sox beat for the Providence Journal. He has also contributed to Baseball Prospectus, NBC Sports Boston, MLB.com and Yahoo Sports. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBritton