LA getting everything it hoped for in Max

The other day in San Diego, Max Scherzer was talking about how he almost ended up there at the Trade Deadline instead of up the coast in Los Angeles, where he might do as much as anybody to help the Dodgers repeat as World Series champions.

“Twitter can sniff out anything and it was coming through on Twitter that I was getting close to being a Padre," Scherzer said. "Obviously, that was one of the teams I was going to accept a trade to … but it’s funny how things happen. That’s the way baseball goes. It didn’t happen and I’m a Dodger.”

Is he ever.

Not only is he a Dodger. He is still Max Scherzer, at 37. He pitched into the eighth inning against the Padres, who didn’t get him, on Thursday night. And Scherzer got them good, giving up just two hits and striking out 10 as Los Angeles won, 4-0. He is now 4-0 as a Dodger. We look around baseball and see how Trade Deadline moves the Yankees made have transformed their team, particularly because of Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo, who both had a hand in the Yankees’ 7-6 victory over the A’s in Oakland on Thursday as the Yankees made it 12 wins in a row.

But the big name at the Deadline playing the biggest has been Scherzer, who has reminded people, just in case they somehow forgot, that he is one of the great right-handed pitchers of his time. If you didn’t know what year it was against the Padres, or how old he is, it could have been any year with Scherzer, in Detroit or Washington. Still Max. Just a Dodger now.

Scherzer has thrown 29 innings for his new team, striking out 41 batters, while walking just five en route to that 4-0 record. He was predictably dazzling in San Diego as the Dodgers beat the free-fallin’ Padres again. Scherzer's fifth start for Los Angeles might have been his best start, on a night when the Dodgers made it 16 wins in their last 18 games as they keep chasing the Giants in the NL West standings while trying to win the division and avoid a National League Wild Card Game.

“I was just able to sequence,” Scherzer said after the game. “I got in a good rhythm with [Austin Barnes] behind the plate and was just able to execute any pitch at any time.”

Any pitch, any time, for a man who has already won three Cy Young Awards in his career. Scherzer signed that rich free-agent contract with the Nationals when he left the Tigers, he did that after the age of 30, then was as great with Washington as he was with Detroit and finally won a World Series in 2019.

And when the Nats beat the Astros in seven games in the 2019 World Series, it was Scherzer who ended up getting the ball in Game 7, after being scratched from a Game 5 start because of neck spasms. The Spring Training before last, I sat with him in West Palm Beach, Fla., and he talked about the game he pitched that night, at the age of 35, five years into a seven-year contract that people might have thought was too long when he signed it because of his age.

The first thing Scherzer did that morning was count off the deciding games he’d pitched in his career, stopping finally when he got to six.

“But this was Game 7 of the Series,” he said that day. “Most guys can go their whole careers without knowing if they’d be good enough in Game 7 of the Series.”

Then Scherzer said the only job for him that night was to “lay it all on the line.” He did all of that, without his best stuff, and leaving the game with his team still trailing, 2-0. It would have been much worse except for Scherzer and “the grind” he talked about. He pitched around runners on base all night. He never let the Astros break the game open. He threw 103 pitches and waited for the Nationals to come back, as they had all season long. They did, and Scherzer had finally won it all.

Now Scherzer tries to do that again with the Dodgers, who were supposed to be loaded with pitching this season and then were not. Trevor Bauer is on administrative leave. Clayton Kershaw, still a star of the Dodgers when they won their first World Series since 1988 last fall, has not pitched in two months because of left forearm inflammation.

But they still have Walker Buehler, an ace to go with Scherzer the way Stephen Strasburg was in Washington. There is Julio Urías, who starred for the Dodgers’ bullpen last October and is now 14-3 this season in 25 starts. And another former Cy Young Award winner who once pitched in Detroit, David Price, is a player who can start or relieve in October. He's back with the Dodgers after sitting out last season, and he's 4-2 for Los Angeles in 11 games this year.

Scherzer had no shot at another October when he was still with the Nationals. He sure does with the defending World Series champs. There have been other Trade Deadline guys who have produced, and mightily, this baseball August. None has performed better than Scherzer. A few weeks ago, he was the biggest star to change teams. Still pitching like one, in a star place like Hollywood. Starring in the latest remake of “Mad Max.”