Max Scherzer and George Springer — Such a dynamic duo

By Ken Gray, with extracts from Max Scherzer makes successful return on 42nd birthday, Blue Jays edge Nationals by Shi Davidi.

While the article below is a few days old I thought it showed a different side of baseball than typically reported — stats and other performance indicators. What struck me was a human side of baseball — of how players prepare to show up, day after day, while winning or losing. Especially as the 2026 trade deadline approaches, both Springer and Scherzer face the possibility of being traded. Both are on the senior end of their careers; Scherzer turned 42 a few days ago and Springer is in his late 30s. Baseball is a young man’s game, mostly. Read the tea leaves.

Baseball is a game of individual high performance athletes who play as a team. Things get complicated when they are traded to another team, especially when they face their former teammates. They grow accustomed to living in one home town, a necessary social anchor as they travel on the road for half of each long, grueling season. Just a few days ago, after a home game  Kevin Gossman took to the Rogers Centre field with his wife both knowing that he may be traded, soon. They love Toronto. But baseball is a business as well as a game. The needs of family and professional sports do collide at times. Their love of the game meshes, sometimes uncomfortably, with other loves.

As a baseball newbie fan I still find trades, contracts, options, extensions, no-trade clauses (which apparently can disappear in an instant) all rather confusing. As for the motivations around trades, teams need money to attract other players who can fill holes in their rotation and order. Players may want to join a contending team. If baseball is a game of inches, it’s also a game with all sorts of nuances. It’s dynamic. It’s baseball.

[Shi Davidi] George Springer and Max Scherzer clashed six times during the 2019 World Series — the then-Houston Astros star walking three times; the then-Washington Nationals ace getting two flyouts and a strikeout — and the memories are still fresh.

Here is Washington Nationals Park, where the former rivals returned for the first time as Toronto Blue Jays teammates Monday, seven years removed from that Fall Classic won in seven games by the Nationals. Last year, of course, they teamed up to help bring the Blue Jays within inches of a title, while the club’s plans for a return engagement this season have gone badly awry, leaving what comes next for the veteran duo, and the club, up in the air.

They are in control of their fates with no-trade protection — Springer as a player with 10 years of service time, five with the same team; Scherzer through a clause in his contract — and neither cares to speculate about what might happen before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.

“I’m here and I’m going to be here and be in the moment — you can’t let anything that’s X amount of days away affect that,” said Springer. “I play for the Toronto Blue Jays. I love this team and I always have. …

“I believe in this team,” he added. “I believe in the guys in the locker-room and I know that we’re going to fight. So we’ll cross that (deadline) bridge when we get to it. But I believe in the guys in that locker-room.”

Scherzer, reinstated from the injured list before the game on his 42nd birthday, worked around four hits and three walks to allow only one run in 2.2 innings, while greeted by standing ovations before and after his outing.

Scherzer and Springer are being watched by other clubs.

“Look, our record is our record. It’s frustrating as heck that we’re in this position,” said Scherzer. “But we’re professionals. We have a job to do. Every day we come here, we’ve got to win. We got to go one-and-oh every day. You get caught up in the distractions of everything that’s going on around us right now, that’s just not the way you play big-league baseball. You’ve got to do everything you can to win every single day. That’s the mentality we have in the clubhouse, kind of let the other stuff just be noise.”

“It’s special,” said Scherzer. “I’ve got a lot of great memories here in D.C., so the fans, I wanted to show them respect as well because they were cheering the whole time, even when I was warming up. Very appreciative of the fans here.”

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