By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 26, 2014

A couple of months ago, I commenced writing an article regarding Max Scherzer’s impending departure from Detroit that I never finished or posted. I started banging out the column just hours after the Giants eliminated the Royals thanks in large part to Madison Bumgarner’s left arm.

The premise of the piece was “Good Riddance, Max” and it was an angry send-off comparing what Bumgarner had just accomplished to Scherzer’s laissez-faire attitude in recent postseasons regarding his workload.

In case you’ve forgotten the details of the 2014 Fall Classic, Bumgarner threw a complete-game shutout (117 pitches) in the pivotal Game 5 to give the Giants a 3-2 series lead, and then returned on TWO DAYS REST to toss 68 pitches and close out the Royals in Game 7.

The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post article prior to Game 7 in which a reporter asks Bumgarner how many pitches he was prepared to throw in the decisive game (for a team that had already won two of the last four titles, mind you).

“Two hundred,” he said. Facetiously? Maybe. “As long as you’re getting outs. I feel like pitch counts are overrated. So whatever.”

MadBum (what you will get after dining at Mariachi’s Cantina) didn’t give a shit about his future contract status. Or about potentially damaging his arm. Or about the calculus involved in throwing 68 pitches on two days rest. HE JUST WANTED TO WIN ANOTHER WORLD SERIES.

Now, let’s compare that to Scherzer’s comments after Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS. Remember, the Tigers were up 1-0 in the series and on the verge of going up 2-0 and heading back to Comerica Park.

Detroit had a commanding 5-1 lead entering the bottom of the seventh inning. Here is the ESPN play-by-play of what occurred with Max still on the hill ….

Tough inning!!!!! Anyway, after that EASY frame — and a moderate pitch count of 108 — Jim Leyland went to his bullpen in the eighth and the rest is a history that we are all STILL trying to forget.

Here is what Chris Iott wrote for MLIVE.com that night with quotes from Scherzer regarding that sequence of events. Now, remember to compare Max’s comments to Bumgarner’s attitude this past fall ….

Scherzer was asked if he knew he was done after seven.

“Yeah,” he said.

So, no discussion?

“I told them I was done,” he said. “They wanted me done. They had it all lined up how they wanted to approach the eighth inning.

Scherzer was asked again whether he could have gone back out to pitch the eighth.

“No,” he said. “I was done. You can write that. I was done. Everybody, they wanted me done. I was done. I was not going out there for the eighth inning.”

Scherzer was asked if he knew while he was pitching in the seventh that he would not have enough gas in the tank for the eighth.

“Yes,” he said. “I knew I was at my pitches. I knew I was reaching the end. I could tell on my arm. My arm was getting tired. I was getting to the end of my line.”

Scherzer was clearly tired of the line of questioning at that point.

“This is nonsense,” he said.

Now, only Scherzer and Leyland know if Max REALLY told Cancer Stick he was done. Was he protecting his manager or was he really spent? You know what, though?IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!!!!

Can you imagine Jack Morris, Roger Clemens or even someone like Bumgarner being taken out of that game after throwing only 108 pitches? Hell no.

I mean, Morris would have taken Leyland’s Marlboro carton, lit a cig and stuck it in the old man’s eye if he tried to insert JOSE VERAS to start the eighth.

We are talking about JOSE VERAS, people!!!!

But Scherzer isn’t THAT guy. He is analytical. He is a businessman. You don’t make it through 198 starts in your career with only ONE complete game (a .5% clip) without making it clear that the preservation of your meal ticket is your numero uno priority.

This was the justification I was going to use for not caring about Scherzer’s departure when he inevitably signed with the Cubs, Red Sox or Yankees and I still think it is pretty valid.

Add in the $175 million over six years that it will probably take to re-sign the pitcher who will turn 31 in July, and it wasn’t difficult to convince myself that the team would be better off sans Scherzer.

So what has happened in the last few weeks to lead me back to the “Bring Back Scherzer Flotilla?”

Alfredo Simon happened.

You see, what gets overlooked in the Tigers’ failure to win a World Series over the last nine years due to repeated postseason collapses is that you actually have to qualify for the postseason in order to earn a chance to choke it away.

And I am sorry, a starting rotation that includes Simon (4.33 FIP in 2014); a question mark in Shane Greene; the unpredictability of Justin Verlander; and the precarious health of Anibal Sanchez isn’t exactly comforting. At all.

This franchise’s window is closing in the very near future; we cannot turn into a carbon copy of the Philadelphia Phillies UNTIL we win that elusive World Series.

And while re-signing Scherzer now might be financially disastrous in 2018, between all of the other bad contracts the team will be saddled with and the dearth of top-flight prospects in the farm system, would the signing significantly alter the team’s future anyway?

It’s like being in a tremendous amount of debt, getting diagnosed with both pancreatic and liver cancer and then deciding that it wouldn’t be financially prudent to charge that 70″ HDTV to your Best Buy card. WHO CARES?!??!?!?

Bringing back Scherzer just buys more time to see how the 2015 season will play out while many of the team’s “if’s” get sorted out.

Let’s just say that Verlander bounces back to even just his 2013 form (WAR of 5.2), Sanchez stays healthy and Greene can somehow duplicate Rick Porcello’s production from the last two seasons. Well, that could make David Price somewhat expendable at the trade deadline if the team has any glaring holes to patch.

Now, I would love a full season of that starting five — which would bump Simon to the bullpen where he belongs — but that would surely guarantee a $200 million payroll in 2015, and I am not sure that even the most “spoiled” Tigers fans would expect the Ilitch family to absorb that kind of payroll for an entire year.

Even if they sign Scherzer, this team has a myriad of questions marks heading into the season:

Will Jose Iglesias stay healthy? if his shins are a chronic issue, who will play shortstop now that the team has traded away almost every middle infielder in their system?

Will James McCann be able to platoon effectively with Alex Avila or will he Rob Brantly-it-up in the majors? And can Avila even play a full season productively or will brain injuries finally end his career?

Can Anthony Gose hit his weight of 190?

And we haven’t even begun to discuss the Bermuda Triangle known as the team’s bullpen. I mean, we are talking about the team banking on Joel Zumaya, Jr. and a 40-year-old closer coming off a season in which he lost two miles off his fastball; put up an ERA of 4.81 and a WHIP of 1.53; threw his rookie third baseman under a SEMTA; and told his own fans to fuck off.

Would Dave Dombrowski be better off spending some of the $25 million he’d have to earmark for Scherzer in 2015 on the bullpen instead? Maybe, but we all know that’s not how Mike Ilitch works or even possible at this point of free agency.

If you are going to convince him to exceed the luxury tax, you have to do so with a big, shiny superstar who has both name recognition and Scott Boras as his agent (and Jon Heyman as his hype man).

It’s not a perfect plan — for many of the reasons I stated above — but it seems to be our only chance at not having a severely weakened starting rotation in the improved American League Central.

And with all of that guaranteed money headed his way, hopefully Max Scherzer can stop acting like Steve Jobs and start acting a little more like Steve Carlton.

Bite the bullet and bring back Max.