Verlander excited to be reunited with Scherzer
In an alternate universe, maybe the lunch that Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer sat down to have together earlier this week in Florida doesn’t happen. The last time the two played on the same team was in 2014 when Scherzer was 29 and Verlander 31 and if you believe what you’ve heard in the past, the duo were not the best of friends during their time together on the Detroit Tigers.
But in this universe, the one where they’re reunited on the 2023 Mets to anchor a rotation with championship aspirations, they’re veteran leaders and maybe even friends.
“I’m really looking forward to being here with him again,” Verlander said Wednesday at Clover Park. “We’re obviously in different situations in our lives. I think we can both look back at our time in Detroit together. We had such an incredible team but didn’t reach our ultimate goal. Hopefully, reunited here, we can achieve that.”
It almost makes sense that they would be reunited once again. Though their stories are much different, their career trajectories and achievements have always been similar.
They’ve both won three Cy Young Awards. They’ll both likely be first-ballot Hall of Famers. Verlander has a career ERA of 3.24 with 3,198 strikeouts and Scherzer has a career ERA of 3.11 with 3,193 strikeouts.
They’re both righthanded power pitchers and each have a tremendous presence on the mound. They’re each being paid $43.3 million this year.
And they love to compete. Back when they were in Detroit, they competed with each other. In 2019, they competed against each other in the World