Blue Jays turn to Max Scherzer to halt Cardinals' slide

Toronto handed the ball to Max Scherzer at Rogers Centre on Sunday, leaning on a veteran name to try to steady a season that had the Blue Jays sitting fifth in the AL East and facing a Cardinals club at 54-56, fourth in the NL Central. First pitch was set for 1:37 p.m. EDT, and the game carried the feel of a checkpoint for both teams.

The timing made the start matter beyond one afternoon. St. Louis had already beaten Toronto 5-1 on Aug. 1, and the rematch offered the Blue Jays a chance to stop that momentum before it widened into something harder to reverse. Kevin Gausman, another important arm in Toronto’s rotation, had captured the mood around the club when he said joining the Blue Jays was “best decision I ever made.”

Scherzer’s presence fit Toronto’s urgency. The Blue Jays were not turning to a developmental arm or trying to see what a young pitcher could handle; they were turning to a three-time Cy Young winner whose reputation had been built on October pressure and difficult innings. That reputation mattered even more because his Toronto line had been rough, with The Athletic listing him at 1-4 with a 9.49 ERA entering the start. In a season where the margin for error had already thinned, the Blue Jays were betting that Scherzer’s command and experience still offered a better chance to stop a skid than a more cautious option would have.

For St. Louis, the game pointed the other way. A 54-56 record does not usually define a collapse, but repeated losses can quickly change the way a season is read, especially when a team is already fourth in its division and trying to stay in the wild-card conversation. The Cardinals had reason to know Scherzer well, too: MLB Stories noted that Masyn Winn’s second-farthest career home run came off Scherzer on July 30, 2024, a Statcast-projected 416 feet.

That history, paired with the standings and the prior night’s result, gave the matchup a simple shape. Toronto was asking an aging ace to help push a stalled season forward. St. Louis was trying to prove its slide was still only a skid.