After coming excruciatingly close to a World Series title, the Toronto Blue Jays’ rotation will have a much different look.
Last week, the Blue Jays reportedly agreed to a seven-year contract with former San Diego Padres star right-hander Dylan Cease, who will slot into one of the top two spots in Toronto’s rotation. The returners include veteran Kevin Gausman and rookie Trey Yesavage, who currently has 27 2/3 playoff innings under his belt and only 14 regular-season innings.
There could still be room for a veteran addition to this group, and three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer was Toronto’s pick last offseason. Scherzer will turn 42 next season, but he likely pitched well enough in the playoffs to convince teams he still has something left in the tank.
Could Toronto still use Scherzer in a back-of-the-rotation role? It’s possible, but one baseball writer instead believes he’ll rejoin the team with whom he first became a superstar.
On Tuesday, Andrew Tredinnick of NorthJersey.com predicted that Scherzer would go back to the Detroit Tigers, who look to be a starter or two short of building an ideal rotation around ace Tarik Skubal this offseason.
“A return to where it all began and an opportunity to compete for a World Series,” was how Tredinnick described the logic of his predicted landing spot for Scherzer.
Scherzer pitched for the Tigers from 2010 to 2014, winning the first of his three career Cy Young Awards in 2013 and racking up 82 wins (to only 35 losses) and 21.4 wins above replacement. He’s since pitched for the Washington Nationals, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, and Blue Jays.
Though he had an awful September that ballooned his regular-season ERA over five, Scherzer rebounded nicely and outdueled Shohei Ohtani on the mound in the World Series. That could make him a legitimate loss for Toronto, though it’s hard to see anyone complaining about the rotation for a while in the wake of the Cease news.
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