NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES VS DODGERS

October 16, 2021

Max Scherzer

Truist Park

Los Angeles Dodgers

Pregame 1 Press Conference

Q. Dave Roberts when he just spoke about you, he said that yesterday you had mentioned your arm was a little bit tired, but that you were still kind of willing to get out there and do whatever was needed. What would you describe as kind of what you were feeling and how would you say you are, I guess, kind of will bounce back tomorrow for your start?

MAX SCHERZER: Yeah, just kind of walked through kind of everything. Yeah, I mean, yeah, my arm was tired. You close that game, I would expect my arm to be tired.

The bigger question was, how was it going to be to bounce back for today? I have zero experience of trying to pitch on one day of rest, like relieving and come back. I do have experience of pitching on two days. In the 2019 run when I did pitch against the Dodgers, like I relieved Game 2, and then started Game 4. And even in Game 4, that start, I think I went to a hundred pitches and that was a very taxing start in and of itself.

So I knew that if I was going to pitch today, I was going to be limited in some form or capacity, that it was going to be somewhere in the pitch count between, call it, 60 to 90. I have no clue. The so that's, when we just talked that what made most sense is just go pitch Game 2 and then you're on a full slate and we know how to navigate games when I'm at full capacity.

Q. We were talking to Dave about, I was asking him, when the Ray's started the whole opener strategy, what did he think of it. He said he hated it because it looked different and it wasn't what he thought of as baseball. Obviously, he's come to like it. What did you think of that as a starting pitcher, someone who makes his money pitching from one inning as far as you can go?

MAX SCHERZER: I think when you look at this in an elimination game, yeah, it came down to matchups, and the way our front office envisioned it, it kind of worked the plan, that you're able to get certain guys in certain matchups and use guys in and out of the pens. And as players, all we want to do is win, so if you tell us this is going to help us win, yeah, we're all on board. Let's go for it.

To speak on the other side of the coin, from a fan's perspective and baseball as a whole, if you look at it more from the game outside and say, is this something that, do we want the game to go into, do we want to see this in the regular season, my answer is no. No, you don't. You want to see starting pitchers. You want to see starting pitchers pitch deep. I think that's best for the fans, best for the players, everybody involved. I think that's how we all envisioned the games.

But when you get down to elimination games, you get into postseason games, you do whatever it takes to win. So, to me, I think this is more of a question in the off-season if we want to address it.

Q. Just specific to you and your career, if you were preparing for a start, and your team came to you and said, we think our best chance to win is to use an opener ahead of you, how do you imagine you might react?

MAX SCHERZER: I mean, even if they came to me today and said, this is the best way for us to win the ball game, then let's win the ball game. I don't care. I'm here to win. That's it. We're players. That's all we want to do is win.

So if they have a different way to be able to do this. To be able to win, then let's do it. I touched on it before. If there is a problem with, if, as a whole, from the game, look at it from the macro point of view. If we think this is a problem, then, yeah, we need to address it in the off-season.

Q. I was actually going to ask about this, too, but I have another question. I know before the Wild Card game you were asked about the system and whether the system was unfair. Let me spin that forward. Your team won a lot more games than their team, and yet their team has home field in this series. Is there anything about this system that you would like to see changed?

MAX SCHERZER: I don't know if you really want to, when you get in a seven-game series, it is what it is. I don't know. The system works. I'm not here to cry about baseball or cry about this. Like, you know, we were the Wild Card team. Yeah, they won the Division. We didn't. So even though we won 106 ball games, we can say all this and that, but we didn't win our Division.

If you keep the emphasis on winning your Division, I think that's a good thing, for all the teams everybody involved. Like, winning baseball in the regular season matters. This highlights that emphasis to win your Division. Even if we're a great team and have more wins than the Braves or whatever in the regular season, to be able to say, hey, we should be -- no, we didn't win our Division.

So I think that keeps the onus on winning your Division. I think that's a good thing. You know, that's all I got to say on that.

Q. How much does home field advantage even really matter? In 2019 we saw the Nats won every World Series game on the road. The other night, road game. How much does it even matter?

MAX SCHERZER: It helps just in travel and sleeping in your own bed and being in your own routines, but once you get playing baseball and once you actually get out there, it's still, for me, 60 feet-6 inches. It doesn't matter. That doesn't change from park to park.

I don't know, you kind of thrive on the animosity from the crowd. It's fun to kind of pitch on the road and everybody's just screaming. It's deafening and this and that. And like you said, alluded to, when it was the 2019 run we got on, we won all four games, every game in the World Series every road team won.

So, yeah, you just have that road warrior kind of mentality and it's fun to play like that.

Q. Between your experience in the 2019 postseason or even again this week, do you have even more appreciation for guys like Corey Knebel and anybody else we saw in Game 5 coming back posting today on one day's rest?

MAX SCHERZER: Well, their relievers. They build their bodies to be able to do this, to be able to pitch three days in a row or four or five or however they do that. I get how they can do that. You build your arm to be able to do that.

But they're just not built to throw more than 20, 30 pitches in any given day. My arm's not built to do that. I'm built to throw a hundred pitches, and any time I get in a game, my arm gets sore. So just the fact that I even got in the game, I only through 13 pitches. My arm was, it, you know, my body was like you, if you pitch, we should be really sore. So it's confusing trying to take inventory of like how do I actually feel.

So I'm built to pitch once every five days, and so just navigating that, that's just the way we were built, the way to go.

For the relievers, they're built to pitch almost every single day. I mean, you can train your arm to do anything.

Q. All those years in Washington when you faced Atlanta, do you remember at what time or what year you thought, man, these guys are going to be something, and then they win four straight Division titles now?

MAX SCHERZER: They were always kind of tough. Even when they had some losing seasons, they were really good offensively. They just didn't have the pitching. So even when they -- you'd come into this place and like -- the number of times that they came back, even when they were losing, they would find ways -- you could be beating them 5-0 because they didn't have the pitching, but then they all of a sudden could make it 5-5. And you might win the game, but the offense has always been one of their key focal points throughout their entire time. That first and foremost starts with Freddie Freeman, hands down, he's the best hitter I've had to face. And I love facing him because that's who you measure yourself against when you have to face the best. So I can't sit there and say when they were going to get good, it was when they got the pitching.

Q. Given that this year was the first year that you were traded in the middle of a season, I'm curious how did you like sort of approach in your head, like how to fit in with this group coming in late July and how do you think that has gone?

MAX SCHERZER: I don't know. I kind of knew the guys, a handful of these guys across the years of playing against them, seeing them at different All Star games, getting to know a few of them off the field. So I kind of already had rapport with some of the guys. And then, I don't know, just come in, be yourself and go out there and pitch well and we got Trea and just keep the jokes going, find out what the inside humor is and go with it.

Q. That was a good, that was a good compliment to Freddie what you just said there. We see the results, the stats, and so what makes that matchup so hard, even for an elite pitcher like you?

MAX SCHERZER: Because he has the ability to hit every pitch. Doesn't matter what pitch you throw, if you over expose any one of your pitches, I mean, he can hit it out of the ballpark at will. Even if you throw a pretty good location, you locate it pretty good, that doesn't matter against him, he can still hit it out of the ballpark. So you can pitch to him, you can get him out, I have in the past. But I also know, you make a mistake, I mean, it can change a ball game in a flash. You relish those type of matchups, you relish those type of battles, because it really pushes yourself to be at your best, if not even find new ways to have to try to get him out and it challenges you and you got to, you know, match that. Even if you, even if he beats me, like I got to find, all right, take a page out of that, how did he beat me, learn from it and try to come back and get him again.

So, like I said, he's the best left-handed hitter I've had to face over the past, you know, specifically the past seven years and it's been fun because this is what Major League Baseball does, it constantly brings you into competition with the best players in the league.

Q. You grew up in the game at a time when the term "Game 1 starter" meant something, was an honor. Even if you understand the reasons for an opener in Game 1, is the game diminished in any way if teams are going to use openers instead of an ace in Game 1?

MAX SCHERZER: No, I don't think it's necessarily that. I think it's just the reality of where our ball club's at, at this point in time. I think Clayton Kershaw would be starting this game. Unfortunately, he's hurt right now. So it's not, this isn't by design. I think as the Dodgers, we, as a whole, they looked as us to have four starters going in the postseason, but we don't. And so we're just trying to navigate this as best as possible. I would love be out there for Game 1, but it makes more sense for me to start Game 2.