SEATTLE -- The stuff might not have been vintage Max Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer who once possessed one of the most blazing fastballs in the game, but the 41-year-old has accumulated a wealth of pitching knowledge during his 18 seasons and more than 3,000 innings in the majors.
Most importantly: The vintage Scherzer intensity remains unmatched.
Scherzer, making his first start of the postseason after a difficult end to the regular season, allowed two runs and three hits over 5⅔ innings to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to an 8-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday night to even the American League Championship Series at two games apiece.
Scherzer's famous ferocity was on display in the fifth inning, when manager John Schneider visited him with two outs and a runner on base, after Scherzer had recorded a hard-hit out to right field.
Scherzer screamed at his manager: "I'm good! Let's go!"
Schneider quickly returned to the dugout, one of the shortest mound visits in postseason history. You don't mess with "Mad Max."
"It was just a situation," Scherzer said. "I was going through it in my head. I understood where the game state was, knew how I wanted to attack, and then all of a sudden, I saw Schneider coming out and I kind of went, 'Whoa, whoa, I'm not coming out of the ballgame.' I felt too good. And so we had a little conversation that basically I wanted to stay in the ballgame, just with some other words involved."
Schneider laughed as he said that he had been waiting for that kind of moment ever since their first video call in the offseason, when the Blue Jays were looking to sign Scherzer.
"It was awesome. I thought he was going to kill me," Schneider said. "He locked eyes with me, both colors, as I walked out. And it's not fake. That's the thing. It's not fake. He has this 'Mad Max' persona, but he backed it up tonight."
Scherzer struck out Randy Arozarena on a 79 mph curveball to end the inning and then got two outs in the sixth before finally departing after a two-out walk and throwing 87 pitches.
The curveball was key all night -- Scherzer recorded four strikeouts on it, which tied his career high for any game. He had recorded just eight strikeouts on it in 17 starts in the regular season. He threw 10 curveballs Thursday, all for strikes. It was a pitch Scherzer had developed after a few seasons in the majors, one that helped turn him into a Cy Young winner, but it was never his primary breaking ball.
"That's just kind of how the cookie crumbled tonight," Scherzer said. "There were just times I felt like I could rip a good curveball really well, and [Alejandro Kirk] was calling it and I was kind of like in my head, 'Is this the right pitch?' But then I was, 'I feel good with this pitch.'"
Early on, it didn't look like Scherzer would last long. In the bottom of the first, he walked Cal Raleigh with one out and then walked Julio Rodriguez on four pitches. A couple of pitchers in the Toronto bullpen started stretching, just in case the inning got out of hand.
That was understandable given how Scherzer ended the season: He had a 9.00 ERA over his final six starts, allowing 25 runs and eight home runs in 25 innings. In his last start Sept. 24, he allowed 10 hits in five innings. In the start before that, he got knocked out in the first inning of a 20-1 loss to the Kansas City Royals. He wasn't on the roster for the AL Division Series against the New York Yankees.
"Dude's 41," Schneider said. "He lives for this, and you have to respect that, and you have to appreciate that."
Scherzer escaped the first inning when he induced Jorge Polanco to ground into a double play on a 1-2 changeup -- doubling down with back-to-back changeups. After that inning, he stalked off the mound toward home plate, like he often does, a picture of the emotion that has marked his career. Then, he realized he had to let the umpire check his glove.
In getting the win, Scherzer became just the fourth starting pitcher 41 or older to win a playoff game, joining Roger Clemens, Kenny Rogers and Dennis Martinez. He became the first pitcher to make a postseason start for six organizations.
"You're in the biggest moment of the season right now," Scherzer said. "These games are must-win, every single one of them. And you when get success, it's great. This is what you play for. You worked so hard the whole year, make all the sacrifices, put in all the work to get to this moment, to have these types of moments, to be able to win in the postseason."
He got help once again from the hard-hitting Toronto offense -- and perhaps from a questionable quick hook by Mariners manager Dan Wilson of starter Luis Castillo in the third inning. The Jays had scored on Andres Gimenez's two-run homer -- making it two games in a row that Gimenez, Toronto's No. 9 hitter, had delivered an early home run -- and had the bases loaded with one out when Wilson brought in Gabe Speier, his top left-handed reliever. The move backfired when Speier walked Daulton Varsho and then George Springer added an RBI double in the fourth. Wilson brought in Matt Brash, another of his high-leverage relievers, but he uncorked a wild pitch as the Jays made it 5-2.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. added a home run to right-center in the seventh inning, his fifth of the postseason and the Blue Jays' 17th in eight postseason games.
By the ninth inning, many Mariners fans had exited the ballpark, leaving the Blue Jays fans who had trekked down from Canada chanting, "Let's go, Blue Jays!"
Scherzer, who won World Series rings with the Washington Nationals in 2019 and the Texas Rangers in 2023, first pitched in the postseason in 2011 -- against a Yankees lineup that featured long-retired players such as Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
"The excitement of beating those guys back in 2011, it's the same excitement as today, of beating players in this generation," Scherzer said. "You can't get higher than this level of baseball, postseason baseball. So, when you had success 14 years ago, it's the same as today. It's the highest you can possibly be at."