Late at night after a road game last August, Max Scherzer made a special request at the front desk of the Ritz-Carlton in Denver.
“Can you please unlock the piano?”
Chris Bassitt, then a teammate of Scherzer’s with the Toronto Blue Jays, sat and listened as his fellow right-hander’s fingers danced over the keys.
Scherzer’s playlist included versions of Dr. Dre and Eminem anthems he learned by watching “Guitar Hero”-style piano treatments of their songs on YouTube. He even invited Bassitt to make requests.
And this, believe it or not, is how a future Hall of Fame pitcher salvaged his career.
Playing piano not only resolved the lingering right-thumb issues that haunted Scherzer for two years but also enabled him to pitch more like his old self in the 2025 postseason and start Game 7 of the World Series.
“He became Chopin,” Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker said, “and the rest is history.”
Scherzer, 41, continues to play both piano and baseball, convinced his work on the keys strengthens his finger and hand muscles, helps his dexterity and alleviates his thumb pain.
Who’s to argue?
Scherzer, who on March 2 returned to the Jays on a one-year, $3 million free-agent contract, will enter his 19th season coming off a spring in which he pitched 13 2/3 scoreless innings.
His repertoire on the mound remains heavy fastballs and sliders. His repertoire on the piano features rap and selections from “Top Gun.”
“When I heard about it at first, I was kind of making fun of him, calling him ‘Mozart’ and everything else,” said Bassitt, who is now with the Baltimore Orioles. “I was like, you really are losing your mind right now.”
Bassitt wasn’t far off. Scherzer said doctors who previously examined him told him no surgical option existed to relieve the pain in the joints of his thumb. None recommended a viable solution, which is why he literally chose to take matters into his own hands.
To Bassitt and the other Jays who initially snickered at Scherzer’s musical efforts, half-mocking him for a solution he didn’t exactly draw out of a medical textbook, Rach-Max-inoff had a pithy response.
“It’s only stupid if this doesn’t work,” Scherzer said. “It works, so it can’t be stupid.”
How close did Scherzer come to quitting the game in the first part of last season, when his thumb problem would not go away?
“Extremely close,” he said.
Scherzer believes the thumb issue caused the strained right teres major muscle that sidelined him at the end of 2023 and also the right shoulder fatigue that cost him six weeks in the second half of 2024.
He made one start last season before going on the injured list with right thumb inflammation. He tried needling, cortisone shots and other forms of treatment. But he could not find relief.
“There were a couple of times where if I didn’t make my next bullpen or my next game, I was going to walk away,” Scherzer said.
“I can’t remember the exact dates. I just remember two different occasions where, if I don’t make this next bullpen, this next start, my thumb is not cooperating, this is it, I can’t pitch anymore, I’m only going to hurt my arm. It was taking the fun away from pitching. My thumb wasn’t allowing me to be healthy.”
Scherzer isn’t being overdramatic in recalling his frustration. Bassitt specifically remembers hearing him say before one bullpen session, “If this one doesn’t go well, that’s it, I’m going home.” Even after Scherzer rejoined the Jays on June 25, he said the thumb was still a problem. At times, in the middle of starts, the pain would be excruciating.
Cue the symphony.
Scherzer and his wife, Erica, are the parents of four children, all 8 or younger. Their condominium in Toronto had a piano. Shortly before the All-Star break, Scherzer began teaching the kids to play and learning a few songs himself. He had a basic knowledge of how the piano worked. His mother, Jan, had him take piano lessons for a couple of years when he was a child.
Max Scherzer salutes the crowd at Rogers Centre after exiting Game 7 of the 2025 World Series in Toronto. (Kevin Sousa / Imagn Images)
“Obviously, I was never any good,” Scherzer said.
His skill level, as far as the impact on his pitching, was inconsequential. The first time Scherzer gripped a baseball after messing around on the piano, he noticed his thumb immediately felt better. So, during the All-Star break, he kept playing.
His first start after the break, against the New York Yankees, wasn’t especially encouraging. But Scherzer, noting the difference in his thumb, said he began “chasing” piano playing as a remedy. He began playing for an hour at a time, Mad Max turning into a mad maestro.
“When you’re playing different keys and notes and chords, your hands are in very unique positions. It makes you really work through your fingertips,” Scherzer said. “By working those muscles in my hand, it got my fingers quote-unquote stronger. All of a sudden, that alleviated the thumb pain.”
Major-league clubhouses, though, typically are not equipped with pianos. The luxury hotels where major-league teams stay were better bets to facilitate Scherzer’s makeshift rehab. His sessions at the Ritz-Carlton in Denver after two night games in early August proved a turning point.
“They were looking at me cross-eyed, like no one had ever asked to play the piano at 10:30 at night,” Scherzer said. “But I was like, well, I need to.”
Unwilling to remain at the mercy of hotel staffs, uncomfortable playing in hotel lobbies, Scherzer bought a portable keyboard. But it couldn’t be just any keyboard.
The keys, Scherzer said, needed to be weighted like the ones on an actual piano. He found the type of instrument he wanted online, then took it on every road trip, playing in his hotel room with the volume down.
Scherzer does not read music, but YouTube offers a variety of piano tutorials for certain popular songs. Click on the link, and a keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen. Notes with letters in squares drop from the top, landing on the appropriate keys to strike.
“It was the easiest crash course to learn how to play different songs without actually having to read music,” Scherzer said.
Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman said at first Scherzer wasn’t very good. But he gradually improved to the point where Bassitt said, “he’s a lot better than you would imagine.”
On the mound, Scherzer’s breakthrough came at Dodger Stadium, in the start after his impromptu concert at the Ritz-Carlton in Denver. His thumb finally feeling normal, he held the Jays’ eventual World Series opponent to two runs in six innings.
He wasn’t as consistent the rest of the regular season. The Blue Jays left him off their Division Series roster before activating him for the final two rounds. Scherzer rewarded them by pitching 14 1/3 innings over three starts and producing a 3.77 ERA.
Against Seattle in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, the volatile pitcher-pianist raged at Jays manager John Schneider during a mound visit, screaming at him that he wanted to remain in the game. And in Game 7 of the World Series, Scherzer allowed one run in 4 1/3 innings, leaving with a 3-1 lead in a game the Jays lost in 11, 5-4.
“This is why I genuinely love Max so much,” said Bassitt, who also was a teammate of Scherzer’s with the New York Mets in 2022.
“It would have been very, very easy for me to be like, all right, you’re a no-doubt Hall of Famer, you’ve had an unbelievable career. And just through unfortunate events where somehow your thumb kind of gave out on you, you can ride off into the sunset. But he was flipping over every single stone to figure out something that was going to help him.”
Once Scherzer found the right stone, the unexpected solution that enabled him to again throw a baseball pain-free, he reacted with almost childlike enthusiasm — and, according to Walker, his pitching coach, absolute commitment to his unique form of rehab.
Gausman, too, was impressed.
“I remember talking to him one game and he was like, ‘it’s cool that I’m 41 and learning something new. I’m starting something I don’t know anything about,’” Gausman said.
“But the way he was talking about it, it really excited him. Doing something new. And also being bad at something. Obviously, he’s one of the greatest pitchers of this generation. He kind of was challenging himself almost. And it ended up being one of the best things he’s done, for himself and for his career.”
The first thing Scherzer did after the World Series was buy a piano for his home in Jupiter, Fla. He is renting the same condominium in Toronto this season so he can play the same piano. And Walker joked, “now we can catch him on a daily basis putting on a show in some clubhouse backroom.”
Scherzer said if he stops playing piano, the pain in his thumb will return, “100 percent.” So play he must, even if he is more likely to end up in the Cooperstown Hall than Carnegie Hall.
No matter. The only recitals that matter to Scherzer are the ones he conducts on the mound. And to keep the curtain rising at 41, he said, “All I have to do is play the piano.”
Bassitt still can’t believe it.
“Out of all the treatments in the world we can do, it was a piano that freaking saved him?” Bassitt said. “This is such a Max Scherzer thing, that a piano literally saved his career.”
