DUNEDIN, Fla. – When we last left Max Scherzer last week, he and those wacky robot umpires had just gotten off on the wrong foot.
“We’re humans,” Scherzer grumbled last Tuesday, after his first start dealing with MLB’s experimental new robot-ump (AKA Automatic Ball-Strike) challenge system. “Can we just be judged by humans?”
Fortunately for Scherzer, no actual robots read that quote. Unfortunately for Scherzer, Trea Turner read all about it.
So on Sunday, as Scherzer took the mound for his second start of this newfangled robotized world he lives in, more robot frivolity was about to ensue.
Leading off against him was his good friend Turner, who once played with Mad Max in both Washington and Los Angeles. What happened next made for a classic spring-training chucklefest moment.
Scherzer’s first pitch of the game was a thigh-high fastball, not even close to the inside corner. If this were any other baseball game ever played, or if this had been any other hitter and pitcher, you would not be reading about this right now.
But this was Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. So of course Turner tapped his cap to challenge this called strike, knowing there wasn’t a robot on this (or any other) planet that would possibly overturn that call.
It was a clear case of technological hijinks run amok. But as Scherzer and Turner did not attempt to hide their hilarity, it was the best argument ever for technological hijink-ery.
There would be another 367 more pitches thrown in this game. But there were more postgame questions about the first pitch than the other 367 put together.
“Are you pretty sure that Trea knew, as he stepped in the box, that he was going to challenge that first pitch?” Scherzer was asked afterward.
“Not a doubt in my mind,” Scherzer replied.
And what did he think Turner was up to (while being egged on, incidentally, by Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long, another former cohort of theirs in Washington)?
“Oh, they’re just messing with me,” Scherzer said. “There was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes there. I mean, I can’t take these (games) that seriously. These are practice games, and I’m going against good friends of mine. So we’ve got too many good stories together. Trea, obviously one of my favorite teammates of all time, from playing with him in D.C. So we’ll have a good laugh about this one.”
It didn’t sound as if Scherzer was ready to hire a private investigator to figure out for sure what Turner was up to. But just in case that was on his potential to-do list, Turner couldn’t wait to confess.
“Were you trolling Max?” he was asked.
“Yes, of course I was,” he said.
And when did he decide he was doing this?
“When I was stretching,” Turner replied. “I was hoping the pitch would be right down the middle.”
He then admitted he had co-conspirators in this caper — most prominently his double-play partner, Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott, who said: “You won’t challenge the first pitch of the game.”
“And I said, ‘That’s a great idea,’” Turner said. “Then nobody believed that I was going to do it. So I said, ‘Why not? I don’t care.’”
And it was all worth it, Turner fessed up, just to see Scherzer shake his head in disbelief.
“Just the reaction on his face,” Turner said. “He looked confused at first. I don’t think he realized I challenged it. And then we were just laughing. It was good.”
Scherzer is world famous for his uniquely Mad Max-ian intensity. But even Turner knew that in the second start of spring training, this little gambit wouldn’t burrow itself too deep under Scherzer’s skin.
“Not now,” Turner said. “In the regular season, it would really piss him off. But now he’s kind of faking his little act. But I knew. I just wanted to see his eyes roll. That’s what I was going for.”
And in case this wasn’t clear, he had seen Scherzer’s quotes last week.
“That’s why I did it,” Turner said.
And Scherzer would confirm afterward that he knew that was 1,000 percent why Turner did it. So it’s good to know these guys are reading all the biggest stories in The Athletic.
This plan was so blatantly hatched that when Anthony Contreras, the Phillies’ Triple-A manager, took out the Phillies’ lineup card before the game, he even let the (human) plate umpire, Brennan Miller, know what was coming.
“Yeah, it was discussed at the plate meeting,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider revealed afterward, “that Trea was going to challenge no matter what. So Brennan was kind of hoping for a ball right down the middle.”
Turner, of course, had already said he was rooting for the same thing. And they almost got their wish.
Max Scherzer’s first pitch to Trea Turner was clearly a strike. (Screenshot via Sportsnet)
But if you were paying close attention during that first inning, you noticed that the wackiness didn’t end with that challenge. Moments later, it was Stott’s turn to hit. And as he marched toward the plate, he was greeted, suspiciously, by his catchy walkup tune, Tai Verde’s “A-O-K,” blared through the speakers — in a road game.
That, it turned out, was not a coincidence, either.
Stott was pretty sure Scherzer had put the Blue Jays up to that gambit, just to get him out of his comfort zone. But Schneider admitted later that it was more of a group effort — as the Jays’ staff pored over Scherzer’s numbers against the Phillies lineup during lunch … and discovered that Stott was 8-for-13 lifetime against him, with a .643 on-base percentage. It’s the highest career batting average (.615) of any active hitter who has faced Scherzer that many times.
“I think if you check Bryson’s numbers against Max, Max would not like them,” Schneider said. “So it was a little bit of a ‘Welcome to the Blue Jays’ moment from a few of us. A couple of guys (in the dugout) didn’t know what was going on. They were, like, ‘Wow, Bryson travels. He’s got a walk-up song in the visitors’ park.’ But no, just having a little fun with Max.”
But wait. That fun still wasn’t over. After Stott popped out to third, for the final out of that inning, the Blue Jays played his “A-O-K” tune again. Just a burst of inning-ending “walk-off” music, Schneider said.
“Yeah, it was a busy lunch back at the complex for some of us,” Schneider said, with a laugh.
Lost in all this mirth was the more important news, that Scherzer now has spun off two excellent starts in his first two spring appearances since signing with Toronto (5 2/3 innings, eight strikeouts, 13 swings-and-misses). But who could concentrate on stuff like that when there were robot umpires — and three-time Cy Young Award winners – to be messed with?
“That,” Scherzer would say later, chuckling about his quotes endorsing humans last week, “is all my fault.”
GO DEEPER
Max Scherzer opines on robot umps after first Jays start: ‘Can we just be judged by humans?’
(Photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck / Imagn Images)
