Max Scherzer roughed up in nightcap as Mets drop doubleheader to Tigers
Mets manager Buck Showalter takes the ball from pitcher Max Scherzer (21) against the Detroit Tigers in the fourth inning during the second baseball game of a doubleheader, Wednesday, May 3, 2023, in Detroit. Credit: AP/Paul Sancya
DETROIT — This time, Max Scherzer’s sticky situation was only metaphorically so.
He pitched poorly Wednesday in his return from suspension, sending the Mets to a doubleheader sweep at the hands of the Tigers. They lost the opener, 6-5, after Adam Ottavino suffered his first blown save opportunity of the season and dropped the nightcap, 8-1, after an ugly outing from the ace.
Scherzer gave up six runs and eight hits in 3 1/3 innings against Detroit, the lowest-scoring team in the majors. That represented his most runs allowed in a span of 41 regular-season starts dating to July 2021.
The Mets (16-15) have lost eight of their past 10 games. This was the first time in 26 doubleheaders that they lost both contests, ending the second-longest sweep-less streak since 1961.
Scherzer’s ERA is 5.56.
“He’s going to get better,” manager Buck Showalter said, “and we need to get better.”
In Scherzer’s first game in two weeks, the most controversial portion of his previous outing — routine substance checks from umpires — was unremarkable. First-base umpire Adam Beck took a look at his right hand and glove after the second inning, and Scherzer continued to the dugout after the brief stop.
Of greater concern to Scherzer was his drop in velocity. His fastball averaged 92.7 mph, down from 94 last year. He didn’t know why that happened but pointed to the longer-than-usual layoff and chilly weather as possible reasons.
“I want to be sitting 94. That’s who I’ve been,” he said. “To me, that’s more the issue. When I’m averaging 92.5 . . . You gotta figure out the answers to that. Don’t necessarily have them tonight, exactly what was going on. I haven’t watched the video. That’s a job for the next couple of days.”
Scherzer also cited the slower pitches as an explanation for his similar drop in spin rate. Spin rate can fluctuate for a variety of reasons, including changes in velocity, temperature or the substance a pitcher uses to help him grip the baseball.
In his most recent start, Scherzer was ejected by umpire Phil Cuzzi after Cuzzi deemed his hand too sticky. He insisted he was using only rosin and sweat. MLB tagged him with a 10-game ban the next day for violating the foreign-substance policy.
In his return, pitching proved difficult. Spencer Torkelson’s two-out RBI double lowlighted a 22-pitch first inning. Eric Haase, a 30-year-old Detroit native who had five RBIs and the game-winning hit in the afternoon contest, homered off Scherzer in the second.
The scene devolved from mediocre-but-salvageable to just plain bad in the fourth. The Tigers (12-17) tagged Scherzer for three more runs, two on Matt Vierling’s home run. Showalter pulled him after 75 pitches.
Scherzer — who noted that his recently sore back felt good, which was important — said he had trouble locating his pitches and pitching with runners on base.
“That’s symptomatic of when you have a long layoff, that’s kind of the one of the first things that goes, pitching out of the stretch,” he said. “That’s where some of the mistakes were where I got beat and that’s the adjustment I gotta make.”
Tigers righthander Michael Lorenzen, meanwhile, held the Mets to one run and four hits — three from their first six batters of the game — across seven innings. That lowered his ERA from 7.07 to 5.14.
In the undercard, Ottavino’s eighth-inning meltdown cost the Mets a win.
Haase completed his big game with a go-ahead, two-out, two-run single to cap Detroit’s game-winning rally. That sequence began with Vierling’s single on a soft fly ball to rightfield, where Starling Marte made a sliding catch attempt, and included Ottavino hitting Javier Baez with a pitch after getting ahead 0-and-2.
The Mets collected nine hits — including home runs from Tommy Pham, Mark Canha and Francisco Lindor — and five runs off lefthander Joey Wentz, who lasted six innings. But they got just one runner to second base in the final four frames.
Joey Lucchesi gave up four runs in four innings. Most of the damage came on Haase’s three-run homer in the first.
“There were a lot of good things in that game,” Showalter said. “We just couldn’t finish it off.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
