PHOENIX — Long before Max Scherzer was a future Hall of Famer, 14 years before he was slated to start Game 3 of the World Series for the Texas Rangers, he was a young pitcher with a jerky, violent delivery.
When the trade went down during the 2009 Winter Meetings, another promising young hurler was visiting with his parents when a New York writer texted him. Soon after, he saw his name on scrolling on the ESPN ticker. The pitcher turned to his father.
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“Dad,” Ian Kennedy said, “I think I just got traded.”
The way Kennedy recalls it, he didn’t get official word from the New York Yankees until 24 hours later. He made a December drive home unsure where he would report for spring training in two months.
Finally, one of the most impactful trades of the decade became official. A three-team blockbuster had Kennedy going from the New York Yankees to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Scherzer and teammate Daniel Schlereth were going from the Diamondbacks to the Detroit Tigers. Curtis Granderson was going from the Tigers to the Yankees. The Yankees in return were sending Phil Coke and Austin Jackson to Detroit. Edwin Jackson went from Detroit to Arizona.
The deal was a lot to wrap one’s mind around when it happened. The legacy of the trade has only made it more complicated.
“We’re always balancing short term and long term,” former Diamondbacks general manager Josh Byrnes said at the time. “I think this was pretty clear in the short term that it strengthened us, and long term there was some degree of risk.”
In the short term, the deal was a rare boon for all three teams involved. By 2011, Kennedy won 21 games and finished fourth in the AL Cy Young Award voting.
“I peaked too early,” Kennedy joked Sunday, “and then (Scherzer) just kept going and became what he is today.”
At the time of the trade, Scherzer had started 37 major-league games and had a 3.86 ERA. The Diamondbacks, though, feared he would be prone to injury because of his delivery and minor arm injuries dating to his college days at Missouri.
It would be a few more years before Scherzer blossomed from another talented young pitcher into the all-out beast we now know as Mad Max. And in terms of regrets from the Diamondbacks’ side, Kennedy makes a valid point.
“They probably would have traded him anyway when they realized he was going to make a ton of money,” Kennedy said.
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Strange, though, how this game so often brings things full circle. Because 14 years after the trade, Scherzer will start Game 3 of the World Series at Chase Field against the team that drafted him.
“It was short,” Scherzer said of his time in Arizona. “Just basically that year, year and a half. But fortunate for the opportunity that I did get here.”
Those injury concerns famously proved flat-out wrong. Scherzer has thrown more than 2,800 innings in his career and won three Cy Young Awards. To Kennedy — who himself is still pitching at 38, traveling with the Rangers but not active and nursing a rotator cuff strain — the durability is what has most awed him about Scherzer’s career. He said he once asked Scherzer: “Why did people not think you were going to last this long?”
Kennedy, though, knows all about how the aging curve works. He has started only one game since the conclusion of the 2018 season. He said recovering from a start — “that car that would run me over,” he called it — used to take him two or three days. As he aged, it took all five days, if he ever felt recovered at all. The bullpen became a better home.
“Honestly, what’s most impressive to me is that you can still start at our age,’” Kennedy said he told Scherzer. “He goes, ‘No, I had to evolve.’”
Max Scherzer had a 3.86 ERA in two years with the Diamondbacks. (Jonathan Willey / Arizona Diamondbacks / MLB via Getty Images)
Now with the World Series tied at one game apiece, Scherzer is a 39-year-old legend who simultaneously has as much to prove as ever. He has made two postseason starts since returning from the injured list with a right teres major strain. He has surrendered seven earned runs in 6 2/3 innings, showing flashes of good stuff but never looking fully sharp.
Scherzer — who is also using super glue and cotton to seal a cut that developed on his right thumb after his first playoff start — says he is 100 percent in terms of being able to throw his best stuff. Still, he remains unsure what his maximum pitch count could be. In Scherzer’s first two playoff outings, any pitch limit has not mattered. Scherzer lasted only 63 pitches in his first outing and 44 in his second.
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“It’s just getting better and better with him, which is the norm — the command of all his pitches, arm strength,” said Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, who watched Scherzer throw in advance of his Game 3 start.
Sitting in the interview room in the bowels of Chase Field on Sunday, Scherzer deadpanned in classic fashion when asked about the emotions that came when the Diamondbacks traded him.
“I don’t think we need to get into emotions of something that happened 15 years ago,” Scherzer said.
Some of the memories are nonetheless incredible to revisit. When Scherzer debuted in 2008, the Diamondbacks’ rotation included two of the sport’s best pitchers at the time in Dan Haren and Brandon Webb. It also featured a 44-year-old Randy Johnson.
“A lot of it was kind of the little nuances of the game that you kind of take from (them),” Scherzer said. “I actually wish I could go back and circle back with those guys and actually compare notes now. When you’re a rookie, you don’t understand everything you can do. But once you get some years under your belt, I feel like the conversations would be way different today than they were back then.”
As for the trade, Scherzer called it one of his first wake-up calls to the business realities of baseball. He has now been traded three times in his career. The latest came this summer. The Rangers brought him here largely with this very purpose in mind — to have an impact starter pitching in the heat of a playoff run.
Now they are banking their World Series livelihoods on Scherzer being healthy and at his best in Game 3.
Turns out the baseball gods have drawn this one up superbly. When the Rangers learned they would play the Diamondbacks in the World Series, Scherzer had to show video to his daughters to prove he once played in Arizona.
Now at age 39, Scherzer will make one of the most important starts of his career in the same place his journey began.
“You’ve got to match the moment,” Scherzer said. “A lot of times the notion that will be out there is kind of like, ‘Be subdued because the moment is so big.’ … For me, I look at it the opposite way. You have to match the moment.”
(Top photo of Max Scherzer: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Cody Stavenhagen is a staff writer covering the Detroit Tigers and Major League Baseball for The Athletic. Previously, he covered Michigan football at The Athletic and Oklahoma football and basketball for the Tulsa World, where he was named APSE Beat Writer of the Year for his circulation group in 2016. He is a native of Amarillo, Texas. Follow Cody on Twitter @CodyStavenhagen