SEATTLE — Mad Max had nearly a month to fume, seethe and boil as he waited for his October opportunity.
Finally given the ball in the playoffs, he shut down the Seattle Mariners — and his own manager, too.
A fiery Max Scherzer turned back the clock with a vintage pitching performance, and Andrés Giménez homered and drove in four runs as the top-seeded Toronto Blue Jays beat second-seeded Seattle 8-2 on Thursday to even the best-of-seven American League Championship Series at two games apiece.
The 41-year-old Scherzer, left off the AL Division Series roster against the New York Yankees while dealing with neck pain, showed he still had plenty left in the tank by allowing two runs in 5 2/3 innings.
“This is what you play for,” Scherzer said. “You work so hard the whole year, make all the sacrifices, put all the work in to get to this moment, to have these types of moments, to be able to win in the postseason.”
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit his fifth playoff homer for the Blue Jays, who have outscored the Mariners 21-6 at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park after losing the first two games at Toronto’s Rogers Centre by a a combined score of 13-4.
Game 5 is Friday in Seattle, with Kevin Gausman scheduled to start for Toronto as Game 1 winner Bryce Miller goes for the Mariners. Miller has a 2.61 ERA in two playoff starts this October, while Gausman, a two-time MLB All-Star, is 1-3 with a 4.14 ERA in 10 career postseason games.
The series will to Toronto for Sunday’s Game 6, when one team will be facing elimination and the other will be a win away from the World Series.
Scherzer earned his eighth postseason win and first since the 2019 World Series, when he helped the National League’s Washington Nationals beat the AL’s Houston Astros in a Fall Classic that went all seven games and the road team won every time.
Making the 500th start of his MLB career, regular season and postseason combined, the veteran right-hander became the oldest pitcher to start a playoff game since Jamie Moyer was 45 with the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2008 World Series. Moyer, who spent 11 years with the Mariners from 1996 to 2006, threw out the ceremonial first pitch Thursday.
Scherzer yielded three hits, including a solo home run by Josh Naylor in the second inning, but the three-time Cy Young Award winner settled in from there, even picking a runner off first base for the first time since 2013. He was not removed until manager John Schneider’s second mound visit.
With two outs in the fifth, Schneider approached Scherzer on the field, and he told his skipper — in no uncertain terms — he had no interest in coming out of the game at that point.
“I thought he was going to kill me. It was great. He locked eyes with me, both colors, as I walked out,” Schneider said with a smile while referencing the fact that Scherzer’s right eye is blue while his left eye is brown. “He has this Mad Max persona, but he backed it up tonight.”
Scherzer said he was busy thinking about the sequence of pitches he wanted to throw to Randy Arozarena.
“And all of a sudden I see Schneids coming out, and it kind of caught me off guard,” Scherzer explained. “That’s just one of those moments where I know I wanted the ball. I knew the situation of the game. I wanted the ball, and I basically told him that in a little bit different language.”
Schneider left Scherzer in, and the eight-time MLB All-Star promptly struck out Arozarena swinging at a curveball.
“When a Hall of Famer like this tells you he’s good, you ought to leave him in the game,” Guerrero said. “And he showed he’s good.”
It was one of five strikeouts for Scherzer, who pounded his glove in excitement.
“I tried to stay away from him,” teammate George Springer said. “You don’t really want to get in Max’s way, so you kind of just let Max be Max. It was entertaining, for sure.”
Said Schneider: “I’ve been waiting for that all year, for Max to yell at me on the mound. I think at that point there’s numbers, there’s projections, there’s strategy, and there’s people. So I was trusting people.”
Toronto’s lineup, meanwhile, picked up where it left off after scoring 13 runs in Game 3. Giménez hit a two-run homer in the third inning for the second consecutive day, this one off starter Luis Castillo to give the Blue Jays a lead they didn’t relinquish. They tacked on another run in the inning when reliever Gabe Speier walked in a run.
Toronto added to its advantage in the fourth on an RBI double from Springer, who came around to score on a wild pitch by Matt Brash. Guerrero, who singled earlier in the game, smacked an opposite-field homer to right in the seventh off Eduard Bazardo.
Guerrero leads the majors with five homers in these playoffs, breaking the franchise player record for one postseason that he had shared with José Bautista (2015).
Giménez provided more insurance in the eighth with a two-run single up the middle that deflected off reliever Emerson Hancock’s glove.