After beating the Tampa Bay Rays 13-4 on the final day of the regular season,\u00a0Toronto Blue Jays\u00a0superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. channelled one Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe job is not finished,\u201d he said that day. \u201cJob\u2019s not finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
With one goal in mind, the Blue Jays rolled their way to the World Series and came as close as one can get to glory, but fell just short in a gut-wrenching 11-inning Game 7.<\/p>\n
Nearly a month removed from getting their hearts ripped out, Bryant\u2019s mantra is top of mind once more, particularly for Max Scherzer.<\/p>\n
In an interview on\u00a0Leafs Morning Take\u00a0with Nick Alberga and Jay Rosehill on The Leafs Nation, the 41-year-old two-time World Series champ made it clear he wants to finish the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball gods got it wrong. We did everything right in a lot of different ways,\u201d Scherzer said when asked about whether he\u2019s drawn to return to the Jays next season to finish what he started. \u201cSo, that notion that there\u2019s some unfinished business, yeah, we know we\u2019re a championship-calibre team, and we want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scherzer is currently a free agent after signing a one-year, $15.5 million deal with the Blue Jays ahead of the 2025 season, so it\u2019s no guarantee he\u2019ll be back north of the border in 2026.<\/p>\n
However, he did make it clear that, despite being 41 years old, he\u2019s still got some gas in the tank, and that running it back in a clubhouse he loved with teammates he loved is something he wants.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball\u2019s funny. I understand the business of this. The team\u2019s not going to look the exact same \u2014 there\u2019s going to be free agent signings, and guys traded \u2014 it\u2019s just the way the game operates,\u201d Scherzer said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut from our standpoint, we just want everybody back. We want to get as many guys as we can back because we just know the clubhouse works and we know how well we play together, and it\u2019s such a good thing we had there in \u201925 that we want to do it in \u201926.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scherzer still has more to give at age 41<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a perfectly smooth ride for the three-time Cy 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.<\/p>\n
But Scherzer attributed much of his struggles to a nagging thumb issue he dealt with through the start of the season, which held him out for all of April and May, and most of June.<\/p>\n
He began turning a corner in August, when he earned a 4-1 record and a 3.34 ERA in six starts. He parlayed that into three solid appearances in the Jays\u2019 post-season run, including Game 7 of the World Series, when he allowed one run over 4.1 innings with three strikeouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing through those playoffs, I knew like \u2018Hey, I feel good,\u2019 and especially with the thumb. To me, this was all about the thumb. The thumb was causing all the issues. The thumb was causing all my arm issues, all my shoulder issues. It was the only reason I wasn\u2019t out there able to pitch the way I wanted to be able to pitch. I have solved that; that is completely gone. It\u2019s over. That has freshened me up, and so how I pitched in the playoffs I feel is more indicative of how I can go out there and pitch next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scherzer hopes to finish the job with Jays<\/p>\n
Scherzer mentioned that, with his thumb healed, he\u2019s able to get back to his regular off-season training routine and pre-season ramp-up. He said that he sees himself being a 30-start pitcher next season and that he\u2019s \u201creally turned a corner. I\u2019m really ready to go. The playoffs kind of cemented that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the off-season in MLB comes with more than just training. For many players, it\u2019s a time for decisions about their futures.<\/p>\n
Scherzer\u2019s been through it, having played for seven different franchises over the course of his 18-year Hall-of-Fame career, and he understands that he just has to \u201clet the calendar work\u201d as the months go by in free agency. But after coming that close to success with a group he seems to have a love for, it appears as though he wants to finish what he came to do when he signed that one-year deal last winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want everybody in that same exact situation playing the exact same ball,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After beating the Tampa Bay Rays 13-4 on the final day of the regular season,\u00a0Toronto Blue Jays\u00a0superstar Vladimir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-317069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}