Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer in their brief stay as teammates with the 2023 New York Mets. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
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Only 18 days from now MLB pitchers and catchers are slated to report to spring training camps in Arizona and Florida. Veteran hurlers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer may not be among them.
Despite an avalanche of recent free agent signings, the two future Hall of Fame right-handers are still out there. Verlander will be 43 on Feb. 20 and Scherzer is 41.
Both ended their seasons strong in San Francisco and Toronto respectively. Both have bounced around from club to club in recent seasons while dealing with various injuries. Both have said they still have the burning desire to play.
“I would hope, somebody would offer me a contract now,” Verlander commented in Phoenix last September after he threw seven scoreless innings for the Giants against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Verlander didn’t get the decision that night at Chase Field in a 5-1 Giants 11-inning win, which was pretty typical of his bad luck throughout the 2025 season. He set a club record by failing to win a game in his first 16 starts, going 0-8. But Verlander wasn’t as bad as those numbers indicate. The Giants scored three runs or less in 21 of his starts and the bullpen blew leads nine times.
The Giants haven’t indicated they want him back for the 2026 season. He may not want to return to San Francisco, considering the circumstances. There weren’t many takers for him last year either when he signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Giants on Jan. 11, 2025.
Verlander Still Is Trying to Be The Last 300-Game Winner
The holy grail for Verlander is still 300 wins. He has 266 and is just 34 away. In that regard, 2025 was a wasted season with his 4-11 record.
Randy Johnson was the last to reach 300, ironically for the Giants on June 4, 2009, during the first game of a rainy doubleheader at Washington’s Nationals Park. At 45, Johnson was the 24th pitcher and sixth left-hander to reach that vaunted plateau. He finished his career with 303, and everyone wondered at the time if there would be any others. We’re all still wondering.
“I definitely think I can do it,” Verlander told me when I was with Sportico during the last spring training. “I need a few [good] years. I need two extremely, extremely good years, three overall. Just give me two healthy years where I make 30-plus starts a year. If I make 30-plus starts for three more years it’s definitely possible. Can I do it? Based on how I feel right now, yes.”
Then 2025 happened.
Since winning his second World Series title with the Houston Astros and his third American League Cy Young in 2022, he’s moved from Houston to the New York Mets, back to Houston and then to San Francisco.
Like Verlander ,Scherzer Believes He Can Still Pitch
Scherzer also contends, “I can still do this,” which he told The Athletic in November after the Blue Jays lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers on the final pitch in the 11th inning of Game 7. He started that game.
Since 2021, Scherzer has played for Washington, the Dodgers, the Mets, the Texas Rangers and Toronto, winning World Series titles for the Nationals in 2019 and Rangers in 2023 and losing in Detroit and Toronto. Verlander and Scherzer crossed paths twice, pitching on the same staffs with the Detroit Tigers and a short tint with the Mets before both were traded.
You’d think there are teams out there now that could use a veteran fourth or fifth starter. The New York Yankees and D-backs, where Scherzer began his career as their No. 1 pick in the 2006 draft, come immediately to mind. The Giants are also a possible landing a spot for Scherzer because of his relationship with new manager Tony Vitello, fresh out of University of Tennessee with no pro experience.
Scherzer most recently started Games 3 and 7 of the World Series for the Blue Jays, becoming the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to ever start a game for four different teams in the World Series. He didn’t win either, coming out early in both.
“It never gets old,” he noted back then.
Both pitchers have a will to win and long careers of achievement to fall back on – Verlander with 20 seasons and Scherzer 18. In Toronto, Scherzer’s teammates hailed his presence in the clubhouse and dugout perceptions even on days he didn’t pitch.
“I’m here to compete. I’m here to win,” he said during the World Series. “I wouldn’t be looking backwards at all for any motivation. I have plenty of motivation. I’m here to win, and I’ve got a clubhouse full of guys who want to win, too.”
Scherzer Let Go By Blue Jays After the Fall Classic
Yet, almost as soon as the World Series was over, the Blue Jays announced they weren’t bringing Scherzer back. Instead, they signed the erratic right-handed starter Dylan Cease to a seven-year, $210 million contract early in the free agent season. Cease and Scherzer are both clients of agent Scott Boras. Scherzer, much like Verlander, earned $15.5 million in 2025. Verlander is represented by Mark Pieper.
During the American League Championship Series, the Blue Jays eventually won in seven games over the Seattle Mariners, with Scherzer starting Game 4. Much to his chagrin, he was left off the roster in the AL Division Series against the Tigers. A right thumb injury had derailed much of his regular season.
Skeptics were dubious. Scherzer hadn’t pitched in nearly a month because of soreness in his left shoulder. There were two outs in the fifth inning of Game 4 when Toronto manager John Schneider went to the mound intending to lift him. Scherzer got in the manager’s face and refused to go.
“We had a little [animated] conversation and basically I said I wanted to stay in the ballgame,” Scherzer explained at the time. “There were some other words involved. I knew I was strong. I knew I could get outs in that situation.”
Schneider backed off and let Scherzer stay in. He struck out Randy Arozarena to end the fifth and preserve his own win. Schneider let Scherzer come out for the sixth, but when he walked Jorge Polanco with two out, that was it.
During the World Series, Schneider pulled him during the fifth inning of both his starts without incident. But showing up the manager on the field in front of the entire team and 46,981 fans in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park was not a good look.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Scherzer is no longer with the Blue Jays and has yet to obtain a new job. Right now he and Verlander are still unsigned with seemingly a lot more to give before the doors to the hallowed Hall in Cooperstown, N.Y., swing wide open for them.