“I don’t come to the park for all the other hoopla; I come to the park because I want to win another World Series with my teammates,” Scherzer said days before opening the 2020 season.
The last competitive game Max Scherzer pitched was the biggest of his life. And he was not about to let the designated hitter rule disrupt his routine before Game 7 of the World Series.
who will face the Yankees on Thursday as baseball begins its 60-game regular season — did what he has always done when starting for the Washington Nationals: He took batting practice. Even though he wouldn’t be batting that night, since the game was being played in Houston under American League rules, Scherzer had to take his swings.
“I’ve done that for so long that when I got in the World Series, I wasn’t ready to break my routine yet,” he said by phone on Monday. “It’s one of the things I do to get my body going, to get loose and stretch out. For me, the hitting was just to stay active throughout the whole day, so I don’t just sit in air-conditioning and stay tight and turn it on all at once.”
Now, Scherzer will lead baseball into its strange new world as the Nationals’ opening day starter on Thursday. The opener in Washington will be the first regular-season game ever with the designated hitter in a National League park, a move intended to protect pitchers through a regionalized, shortened schedule that includes more interleague play. The A. L. has had the D. H. since 1973.
Scherzer is not sure if he will keep batting practice as part of his routine; he may substitute medicine ball tosses as a way to stay warm before taking the mound. However he gets there, the first pitch of a most unusual season will be in his hand, with a familiar opponent in the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole.
Scherzer beat Cole in the World Series opener last fall, but missed their scheduled Game 5 rematch with severe neck spasms.
