LOS ANGELES — Starting pitchers for 200. It was not a Jeopardy question at Dodger Stadium this week. It was a prelude-to-Cooperstown and anticipating-the-stretch-run kind of number.
One day after the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw became only the fourth active pitcher to reach 200 career victories, all eyes were on Max Scherzer, who took 204 career wins and three extra days between starts to the mound with him in a game between the Mets and the Dodgers, two of the five highest-paid teams in Major League Baseball.
Scherzer, famously in tune with his body, downplayed the lingering soreness in his back following his last start that had caused the delay. He had managed back soreness before, he said, and it was nothing major, just an issue that occurs periodically and gradually disappears with rest. So the Mets pushed his next start from Sunday back to Wednesday and trusted that it would.
Trust and the health of their pitchers, however, has not been an easy concept to embrace for the Mets during their 10-day, 10-game West Coast swing.
Already playing without another active 200-game winner in Justin Verlander (right teres major strain), the Mets lost another starter to the 15-day injured list this week when the right-hander Carlos Carrasco developed inflammation in his elbow and was administered what Manager Buck Showalter described as an anti-inflammatory “injection.”
So yes, all eyes — especially those of the Mets — were on Scherzer under a bright sun and clear skies Wednesday at Dodger Stadium. Showalter figured it would become evident what he and his team were “dealing with” within the first couple of innings.
But as so often happens in this game, what played out was far more than the manager could have imagined. Scherzer’s back appeared fine and the ace checked all of the boxes that needed checking for three innings, but then he was ejected by the crew chief Phil Cuzzi before the start of the fourth inning because the umpires detected a foreign substance during one of their routine inspections.
Scherzer, who is animated in nearly all interactions, pleaded his case, furiously maintaining that the only thing he was using was the league-approved rosin. But the explanations did not persuade the umpiring crew.
Scherzer, who had been sent back to the dugout for the same reason before the start of the third inning — warning No. 1 — was finished for the afternoon having barely broken a sweat in three scoreless innings. Scherzer will face a 10-game suspension over the incident, though he is likely to appeal any decision.
It was an astounding twist in what has been a pretty good trip and a solid start to the Mets’ season despite Showalter, the pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and General Manager Billy Eppler having to patch holes in the pitching staff at an increasingly furious pace.
In addition to Verlander and Carrasco being out, the left-hander José Quintana (stress fracture in his rib) is shelved through midsummer.
Part of this is simply the wear and tear of the season, even if it is only mid-April. As Showalter said, “pitching is not a normal thing to do to your body.”
But more than most, Scherzer, 38, and Verlander, 40, through their combined 447 victories, have thrown hundreds of innings and thousands of high-leverage pitches. The Mets knew this when they signed Scherzer to a three-year, $130 million deal before the 2022 season, and they knew it when they signed Verlander to a two-year, $86.7 million deal last off-season.
“It’s a volatile position,” outfielder Tommy Pham said. “It’s why they get quarterback money.”
Center fielder Brandon Nimmo said that while it will be nice to have Scherzer and Verlander together in the rotation soon, the team is not obsessing about things now.
“Part of the game for us. That was partly the way Billy and Steve built the team,” Nimmo said, referring to Eppler and the club’s owner, Steven A. Cohen. “We have some depth. We have the next guy up step in to fill in.”
For Scherzer, on Wednesday, that was reliever Jimmy Yacabonis and it happened much more quickly and in a thoroughly different way than anticipated. The Mets love everything about the days Scherzer pitches: Playing behind him, his energy, the way he powers through every moment with the force of a tropical storm from the moment he arrives at the ballpark.
When he shows up, Nimmo said, Scherzer is out of his street clothes and into his uniform in the blink of an eye. It is something Nimmo teases him about — at least, when Scherzer’s adrenaline is back down and his hunting instinct has turned off for the evening.
“He comes in and is off and on with his clothes while I’m still getting my first button unbuttoned,” Nimmo said before Wednesday’s game, chuckling. “He works fast. He does everything fast. He’s a joy to be around.”
Showalter, who had written the rookie catcher Francisco Álvarez into the lineup for Wednesday’s series finale with the Dodgers, mentioned this in a similar vein.
“Max is one of those rare veteran starters that, like, if there’s a young catcher who needs to catch, he wants him,” Showalter said. “He enjoys bringing those guys along and kind of helping them and showing them.”
The backstop collegiality did not last as long as anticipated. The umpires checked Scherzer as he came out to start the third inning, found a sticky substance that they thought was excessive and sent him back to clean up. Scherzer clearly was not happy as he made his case.
The same thing happened an inning later and Scherzer never even made it back onto the field to start the fourth. His afternoon was finished, having held the Dodgers scoreless with one hit, three strikeouts and two walks. He threw 47 pitches, 32 for strikes. Not the full day’s work that a team relies on from an ace.
But as they have most of the way, the Mets figured out a workaround. Facing Noah Syndergaard as he made his first career start against the Mets, the organization in which he cut his major league teeth and developed into a star, Nimmo hammered a two-run homer in the fifth to position the Mets to win, 5-3, and take two of the three games in Los Angeles.
Already, they had swept the lowly Oakland Athletics over the weekend. Then they won the series opener over the Dodgers to stretch their winning streak to five games before running into Kershaw, who channeled his prime on an emotional night over seven brilliant shutout innings. From the start, it was evident that he was not going to let anything ruin his chance to win No. 200 at home for the only organization he has known.
“As an opposing player, you can look back on some nights and it’s like, ‘Man, I wish I could have’” done this or that, first baseman Pete Alonso said. “But he had his A-plus stuff working. Tip your hat. He was excellent.”
Like Scherzer, Kershaw, 35, battles periodic back issues and must work hard during the season to manage them. Like Scherzer, he is a proud warrior and potential season-changer for a contending team facing a long summer fraught with potential potholes and uncertainties.
But only the Mets, who now travel to San Francisco for the final four games of their West Coast trip, have the potential to run out two of the only four active 200-game winners in what could be an electric and historic rotation. Now they just need to get — and keep — them on the field.
“Having that type of talent and that quality of pitcher is going to be huge for us,” Alonso said. “I’m excited.”
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