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After beating the Tampa Bay Rays 13-4 on the final day of the regular season, Toronto Blue Jays superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. channeled a Kobe Bryant.
“The job is not over,” he said that day. “The job is not over.”
With one goal in mind, the Blue Jays clawed their way to the World Series and came as close as anyone could get to glory but fell just short in a gut-wrenching 11-inning Game 7.
Nearly a month removed from ending their hearts, Bryant’s mantra is once again on the mind, especially for Max Scherzer.
In an interview at Morning Lief On The Leafs Nation with Nick Alberga and Jay Rosehill, the 41-year-old two-time World Series champion made it clear he wants to quit.
“The baseball gods got it wrong. We did everything right in different ways,” Scherzer said when asked if he was ready to return to the Jays next season to finish the season he started. “So, the perception that there’s some unfinished business, yes, we know we’re a championship-caliber team and we want to do that.”
Scherzer is currently a free agent after signing a one-year, $15.5 million contract with the Blue Jays before the 2025 season, so there’s no guarantee he’ll be back north of the border in 2026.
However, he made it clear that, despite the age of 41, he still has some gas in the tank, and it was back in the clubhouse that he loved his teammates, what he wanted.
“Baseball is funny. I understand his business. The team is never going to look the same — there’s going to be free agent signings and people being traded — it’s just the way the game goes,” Scherzer said. “But from our point of view, we just want everybody back. We want to get as many people back because we just know how the clubhouse works and we know how we play together, and it’s a good thing that we had in ’25 that we want to do in ’26.”
It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride for the three-time Green Young winner in his lone year with the Blue Jays. He pitched to a career-high 5.19 ERA and finished with a 5-5 record with 82 strikeouts in 17 starts.
But Scherzer attributed much of his struggles to a nagging thumb issue he dealt with earlier in the season, which kept him out through April and May, and most of June.
He began to turn a corner in August, when he had a 4-1 record and a 3.34 ERA in six starts. He did so in three strong appearances in the Jays’ postseason run, including Game 7 of the World Series, when he allowed one run in 4.1 innings with three strikeouts.
“Going through those games, I knew, ‘Hey, I felt good,’ and especially with the finger. For me, it was all about the thumb. The thumb was causing all the problems. The finger was causing all my hand problems, my shoulder problems. It was the reason I couldn’t go out. It’s over, that’s what made me fresh, and that’s how I feel about how I can go out and next year.
Scherzer mentioned that, with his finger healing, he is able to get back to his regular offseason training routine and preseason ramp up. He said he sees himself as a 30-start pitcher next season and that he has “really turned a corner. I’m really ready to go. Kind of cemented the playoffs.”
But the offseason in MLB comes with more than just training. For many players, it is time to make decisions about their future.
Scherzer has been through it, playing for seven different franchises during his 18-year Hall of Fame career, and he figures to just “let the calendar work” as the months tick by in free agency. But after coming close to success with a group he seems to love, it appears he wants to end what he came for when he signed a one-year deal last winter.
“I want everybody to play the same ball in that same situation,” he said.
