Article: Max Scherzer Has History (And Justin Verlander) in His Sights

[Mike LeSage]

The newest Toronto Blue Jay sits at 11th on the career strikeouts list. What will it take for him to crack the top 10?

Max Scherzer enters the 2025 season with 3,407 strikeouts in his storied career. That’s a lot! In fact, only 10 major-league pitchers have ever thrown more. If Scherzer wants to earn entry into the top 10, he’ll need to chase down two targets, one static and one active.

Before we get to the guys Scherzer is chasing, let’s take a moment to look at some of the pitchers in his rearview. Last season, he started the season at 12th on the list with 3,367 K’s. With the first strikeout of his second start, he moved beyond Greg Maddux into 11th place. The 10 players behind Scherzer on the strikeout list include seven Hall of Famers, two future Hall of Famers in Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw, and Curt Schilling, who would likely be in the Hall already if not for a history of hateful statements. Pretty elite company.

Directly ahead of Scherzer, with a lead of just nine strikeouts, is Justin Verlander, who will pitch for the San Francisco Giants this season. The two players were teammates on the early 2010s Tigers teams that made it to three straight American League Championship Series and one World Series. Although Verlander started his career three years earlier, Scherzer slowly started closing the gap around 10 years ago, then leaped into the lead when Verlander missed the entire 2021 season. It’s been neck and neck ever since.

The Giants come to Toronto for a three-game set in July; is a head-to-head matchup too much to hope for? Verlander’s K-rate dropped to 18.7% last season (compared to his 24.5% career mark), while Scherzer’s dipped to 22.6% (compared to a career mark of 29.3%). Assuming those trends continue, we should see Scherzer rack up K’s at a slightly higher rate, allowing him to overtake Verlander at some point. If we switch to strikeouts per nine innings and assume that both pitchers continue at the rates they showed in 2024 – 8.3 K/9 for Scherzer and 7.4 for Verlander – we should see Scherzer overtake Verlander once both pitchers have reached 94 innings pitched. If Scherzer is able to reverse that dip and get closer to his 2023 rates, we could see him catch Verlander as early as 42 innings pitched. We’re talking about pitchers in their 40s, so there are clear concerns around their health and workloads. This part of the race may just come down to who can throw more. Both pitchers are reportedly fully healthy and projections have them throwing between 90-120 innings. This will be an interesting race to follow as the season progresses.

Maybe both pitchers overcome Father Time and pitch well and often. That brings us to the static target. Walter Johnson is in the ninth spot on the list, with 3,509 strikeouts (102 ahead of Scherzer). In Scherzer’s 17-year career he has only failed to crack 100 K’s three times: the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, his 2008 rookie year (66 K’s in 56 innings) and his injury-plagued 2024. If he continues the lower strikeout pace he ran in 2024, it would take him 110 innings to reach Johnson. After the Big Train come Gaylord Perry with 3,534 and Don Sutton with 3,574. Scherzer would need to both ramp up his strikeout rate and get back to something like 150 innings for a chance at catching Sutton. However, Johnson should be reachable for both pitchers. The chase will add one more layer of intrigue to a make-or-break season for the Blue Jays.

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[Omar]

Gotta admit a potential Verlander vs Scherzer matchup this July in Toronto would be great.

[ian]

Scherzer vs Verlander that would be fun.