Max Scherzer's incredible march through baseball history

It is almost breathtaking now to see this senior Blue Jay with his name surrounded by the greatest who ever played

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Every time Max Scherzer takes to the mound for the Toronto Blue Jays, take a moment, pause, and understand that you are witnessing baseball history.

We don’t know when the last start of his magnificent career will be. We only know it’s not that far away.

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When Scherzer moved into 10th place on the career strikeout list last week — ahead of The Big Train, the legend of a hundred years ago, Walter Johnson — the numbers are almost impossible to equate.

Mad Max has 3,520 strikeouts in 3,005 innings pitched. That’s more strikeouts per inning than the most powerful pitchers ever. More than Nolan Ryan per inning, more than Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Steve Carlton and way more than Cy Young.

Scherzer may have six or seven starts left this season, assuming he stays healthy, which could push him past Gaylord Perry into ninth place overall — a place on the all-time list where he will never be passed again.

The kind of numbers that Scherzer and a fellow veteran, the retiring Justin Verlander, are putting up as their careers come to an end will never be equalled again.

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Starting pitchers no longer throw enough innings to historically factor in on career wins and strikeouts.

Analytics and spin rates, graphs and charts have dealt today’s pitchers out of the all-time standings. Atlanta’s Chris Sale is 791 strikeouts behind Scherzer among active pitchers. He’d need five full healthy years to be close to 3,520 punchouts. Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, 1,177 behind Scherzer, would probably require seven healthy seasons to pass Scherzer.

That isn’t happening.

In recent years, while fighting all kinds of injuries, Scherzer has passed Bob Gibson, Pedro Martinez, Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux — four of the best pitchers anybody has ever seen — on his way up the career list.

It is almost breathtaking now to see this senior Blue Jay with his name surrounded by the greatest who ever played.

Enjoy these moments and these memories. They don’t come around very often in any sport, at any time.

THIS AND THAT

One more amazing Scherzer stat: He is 10th in career strikeouts, yet he’s 139th in innings pitched … The Alejandro Kirk of late last season, the guy who blasted the Blue Jays into first place in the American League East, returned Friday night. That Kirk, that guy, is a huge difference-maker … Check the Jays in the standings on Sept. 1. If they’re still close to the final wild-card spot, their schedule certainly favours them over the final month. Even while playing 15 of their final 24 games on the road, they are facing Cleveland, Kansas City, the A’s, Baltimore, Detroit, Texas and Cincinnati. That’s a gimme schedule if ever there was one for a team that hasn’t had many breaks this year … If the Jays actually believed they were a playoff team, why trade Jeff Hoffman? He was the perfect guy to pitch the seventh inning. Then Tyler Rogers in the eighth and Louis Varland in the ninth. That would have been an insta-bullpen for manager John Schneider, who isn’t exactly the greatest bullpen strategist who ever lived … The unsung hero of this season might be Ryan Mittleman, the former Boston College hockey player, who serves as vice-president of pro personnel for the Blue Jays. Mittleman pushed for the Rule 5 acquisition of Swiss-army knife pitcher Spencer Miles, and for the trade of Varland a year ago. Mittleman, who grew up in Toronto, was originally hired by J.P. Ricciardi years ago for a spot in media relations. He worked his way into a senior position in pro scouting, which is enormous because the Jays don’t draft or develop particularly well. … How bad is the American League this season? The Jays entered Saturday 15.5 games behind first-place Tampa Bay, nine games behind the Yankees, four games under .500 and are still in a tight race to make the final wild-card spot. By the way, a year ago, the Rays finished 17 games behind the Jays … The collision at third base that Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s head had with a flying knee Friday night had concussion written all over it. He’s listed as being out for a week. A week might be optimistic on the part of the Jays, who rarely get their injury time frames right.

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HEAR AND THERE

This will be Connor McDavid’s 12th season with the Edmonton Oilers and, really, where has the time gone? He’s already played more games for Edmonton than Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri or Paul Coffey did, and this year he will pass Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson. Messier, Anderson and Kurri won five Stanley Cups with the Oilers. Gretzky won four. McDavid and cohort Leon Draisaitl are still looking for their first … The three best playoff scorers in hockey history: Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and McDavid. With Draisaitl fifth all-time. And that’s with McDavid and Draisaitl putting up those kind of numbers when scoring is far more difficult than it was in the 1980s and ’90s … For the record, Alex Ovechkin won his only Stanley Cup in his 13th NHL season while Steve Yzerman won his first Cup in his 14th … Auston Matthews and William Nylander have scored at .86 points per game in their nine-year playoff history in Toronto, which, combined, has the two barely scoring more than McDavid does by himself. Coming up is their 11th season with the Leafs. Mitch Marner was at .90 per game in his time with the Leafs and then 1.31 with Vegas last season … It’s understandable, big picture, why the very reasonable Morgan Rielly doesn’t want to leave the Maple Leafs. He’s played 951 games in Toronto. This season would take him over 1,000. Only Tim Horton and Borje Salming have played more on defence for Toronto than Rielly. This season, assuming he’s a Leaf, he will pass Mats Sundin in games played and come close to Ron Ellis at 1,034 games. Nobody will be catching George Armstrong for a while at 1,188 games … With or without Rielly, the Leafs remain pencil-thin on defence. They’re one Chris Tanev injury away from missing the playoffs … The first big event I ever covered was the Canadian Open tennis tournament in 1979. The stars of the event were Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl. It was the first time I met the Stellick brothers, Gord and Bob, and the first time I got to know a radio guy named Peter Maher. He was working for the all-news network, CKO, back then, and with a booming voice he was phoning in reports about every 15 minutes. Almost every report started with: “The vigil continues.” A few months later, I moved to Calgary and about a year or so after that, so did Peter, who became the Hall of Fame voice of the NHL Flames. And every time we’d see each other for about the next 40 years, hockey game or not, the first words out of his mouth would be: “The vigil continues.” And then we’d laugh. Maher passed away the other day — as fine a man and you’d ever want to meet. The vigil does continue, but now in memory only … Weird thing is the name of Jeff Greenberg being mentioned as a candidate to be the next GM of the Detroit Red Wings. He’s an executive with the Detroit Tigers. Why would the Wings want someone from a very average baseball team to run their very average hockey team?

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SCENE AND HEARD

There will no longer be Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights on CBC. Taking its place will be something along the lines of Curling Night in Canada. Which is fine, if you’re into that kind of thing. Historically, Canadian curlers have produced quality hour after quality hour of high ratings television but have never been properly compensated for it. Here’s hoping this new venture will bring in viewers and reward the curlers accordingly … Caitlin Clark plays her first game in Toronto on Tuesday night. Can’t miss that. The top nine televised WNBA games this season in the U.S., by audience size only, have been games played by Clark’s Indiana Fever … Clark is not the best player in the W. She’s just the one most people want to watch the most … Speaking of watching, it will be only 38 years between Major League Baseball all-star games in Toronto, give or take a week, when the event is officially awarded for the 2029 season. The first time around, it was kind of a snore-fest at the SkyDome if I remember correctly … This was the best Canadian Open women’s tennis tournament in years in Toronto. The best field. The best stories. The best atmosphere. The best food. I’ve long maintained that tennis is the most underrated live value in sports … The King’s Plate. Still doesn’t sound right to me … People with his name are mostly associated with surgery, but between operations Tommy John pitched 4,710 big league innings.

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AND ANOTHER THING

You have to wonder: What is the state of the Professional Women’s Hockey League when the league’s principal owner and creator, Mark Walter, is being investigated by a federal probe in the U.S., into questionable economics that are way too complicated to begin to explain. He just sold the Los Angeles Lakers the other day for $12.5 billion US, but still owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and the PWHL … If need be, I can see investors Larry Tanenbaum and Christopher Ilitch becoming more central in the PWHL if Walter has to sell his stake. As of now, there are no team owners in the women’s hockey league and no set franchise values… What a difficult and emotional year for Vancouver, the sporting town: Jim Robson, John Garrett, John McKeachie and Jim Jamieson — media men of significance — all passed away, all giants of an active, historically impressive marketplace … The Toronto Tempo has lost 10 games in a row and, really, it could be in its best interests to not win another game in this first season. You see, there’s a special rookie available in the upcoming draft — USC’s Juju Watkins. She could be a WNBA franchise-changer. She’s worth losing over … Watching the San Francisco Giants under team legend Buster Posey reminds me of a little of watching the Red Wings play under Yzerman. You want them to be better because of who is in charge… How is it that every time I turn on my television set lately, I see the real estate mogul Sam McDadi with the best seats in the house? … Shouldn’t we all have careers as extensive and impressive as Rob Faulds had, and probably never made an enemy in his broadcasting life. A fabulous run for a fabulous guy … Canadian quarterback Kurtis Rourke, brother of B.C. Lions QB Nathan Rourke, got injured in his first NFL pre-season game with the San Francisco 49ers … In six of the past seven seasons, the Ottawa Redblacks have gone 0-10, 4-14, 4-14, 4-14, 3-11 and 3-15. Not easy to be that terrible year after year, and now it’s Ryan Dinwiddie’s problem to solve … Josh Allen will be the first quarterback to go in just about every fantasy football league, depending on the rules. But which NFL quarterback goes next? Lamar Jackson? Joe Burrow? Jayden Daniels? Drake Maye? Patrick Mahomes? Caleb Williams? … This is how messed up the WNBA is. They are going to collectively bargain what a woman is … Rod Smith is not in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame media division? How is that even possible? … So, here are the questions with superstar Summer McIntosh: With this being two years away from the Los Angeles Olympics, is she still the dominant female swimmer in the world? Is she in decline? Or, is she simply on the right training schedule to peak for the 2028 Games? Only she and her coaching staff can answer that one. It’s always difficult to take stock of athletes between Olympic cycles … Happy birthday to Sherry Bassin (87), Jannik Sinner (25), Carey Price (39), Craig MacTavish (68), Ed Olczyk (60), Sophie Cunningham (30), Marty Biron (49), Teddy Blueger (32), Yu Darvish (40), Eric Bienemy (57) and Cleo Lemon (47) … And hey, whatever became of Jock Climie?

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