The birds are singing, the snow is melting, and pitchers are getting hurt. Spring is here. The Jays have already lost Bowden Francis for the season. Shane Bieber is delayed, and now it sounds like Yimi Garcia will be as well. The Jays wisely invested in depth this winter. Cody Ponce was an interesting signing to shore up the back of the rotation, and Jose Berrios is still here after a winter of trade speculation. Eric Lauer is here too, and wants a starting job. He’s not in the top 5 right now, but
he has a case and he’d crack most rotations in the league. The depth in AAA looks thin if you don’t think Ricky Tiedemann is a starter in 2026 (we’ll see about long term), but Jake Bloss should be working his way back by June. All of which is to say that the Jays have some shuffling to do but right now look set to field a very good five man rotation with some depth.
Enter Max Scherzer. The last time the future first ballot hall of famer walked off a mound, he’d held the fearsome Dodgers offence to one run over four and a third to start game 7 of the World Series, leaving with a lead and having out-dueled Shohei Ohtani. If the Jays had held on, it would be the crowning moment of one of the best pitching careers of his generation. But they didn’t, and so Scherzer wants to give the storybook ending one more try. It seems like if he pitches in 2026 it will be for the Blue Jays, and repots are that the talks are heating up.
For all his past greatness, he had a 5.19 ERA in the regular season last year and while the stats suggest he deserved a little better he’s firmly a #5 in 2026. As it is, he probably doesn’t crack the starting five even before Shane Bieber’s slow ramp up is completed. It’s hard to imagine him accepting a bullpen role. On the other hand, you never have enough pitching, and he brings a ton of leadership and (arguably psychotic) intensity to the clubhouse. My questions are: will the Blue Jays end up signing Scherzer, and should they?
