What’s Next for the Blue Jays After Max Scherzer’s Reunion?

In baseball, there’s an old saying that everyone’s familiar with by this point: you can never have enough pitching.

Time and time again, this has proven to be spot on, as teams that appear to have starting rotation depth that goes six-, seven-, eight-deep wind up struggling to piece together innings as the regular season arrives and marches on.

The 2026 Toronto Blue Jays are already shaping up to be one of those teams that simply has way more starters than available spots in the rotation. And that was before the news broke Wednesday evening that future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer is back in town on a second single-year pact.

Scherzer’s reintroduction to the Blue Jays’ roster gives the team a total of seven starters that’ll be a part of the Opening Day roster. Shane Bieber, who is not going to be ready due to forearm fatigue, is not included in this picture. If he was, though, we’d be looking at a whopping eight arms.

Let’s look a little bit closer at the decision to bring back Scherzer, and see where the Blue Jays could realistically go from here.

Blue Jays Bring Back Max Scherzer

Despite the fact that he’s 41 years old and had a 5.19 ERA across 17 regular-season starts this past season, bringing Scherzer back into the fold is a fantastic move by the Blue Jays. The right-hander has a lengthy track record that speaks for itself, and he’s the ultimate clubhouse guy that every legitimate contender needs on their team.

Entering what will be his 19th season in the big leagues, Scherzer is an eight-time All-Star, three-time Cy Young Award winner, and two-time World Series champion. He’s got well over 3,000 career strikeouts and is inching closer and closer to a whopping 500 starts at the game’s highest level. Again, his reputation speaks for itself.

Don’t get it twisted, though, Scherzer’s addition to the 2026 Blue Jays rotation is not only because he’s a solid vibes guy. Most of his struggles in this past regular season came in the final month of the campaign. He posted a 10.20 ERA across his four starts, which is certainly less than ideal.

However, the month prior he was at 3.34 across 35 innings of work in six starts. “Mad Max” also went five or more innings in a start in 12 of his 17 outings, which says a lot about the state of his arm despite the fact that he’s over 40 years of age. Grandpa status or not, he’s still an absolute workhorse.

The Playoff Success

As is usually the case with this living legend, Scherzer found a way to turn his game up a notch once the lights were the brightest. The right-hander made a total of three starts in the 2025 postseason, including one in the ALCS against the Seattle Mariners and two in the World Series against the Dodgers.

Scherzer wound up posting a 3.77 ERA across 14.1 innings of work, striking out 11 and walking six along the way. Not a whole lot about these numbers jump off the page, but he kept the Blue Jays in the game each time he took the mound, which is precisely what a team looking to win it all needs.

The Blue Jays did a solid job of upgrading this offseason, despite the fact that they lost long-time shortstop Bo Bichette in free agency. Scherzer was said to only be looking to sign with a contender as he creeps closer to retirement, so running it back with a team that’s very much still capable of a deep playoff run feels like the perfect fit.

Who Becomes the Odd Man Out?

The moment the ink dried on Scherzer’s new contract, some tough conversations were put on to the to-do list of Ross Atkins and the rest of the Blue Jays’ decision makers.

Having seven starting pitchers to fill five spots isn’t ideal, even with the increasingly popular six-man rotation making its way around the league. As things currently stand, Scherzer would slot into the back-end of the rotation behind Kevin Gausman, Dylan Cease, Trey Yesavage, José Berríos, and Cody Ponce.

This leaves left-hander Eric Lauer on the outside looking in once again. Rumor has it that he’s not thrilled with that assignment, so it’s clear that some sort of trade could be on the horizon. Now it’s just a matter of which arm gets moved.

Trading Eric Lauer Feels Like the Obvious Move

Lauer, 30, just wrapped up his first season on the Blue Jays, and it was a fantastic one. The crafty left-hander bounced back and forth between the starting rotation and the bullpen and handled each role admirably.

In 15 starts, Lauer posted a 3.77 ERA with 74 strikeouts and 18 walks in 74 innings of work. He went five or more innings eight times, including an epic eight-inning start against the Detroit Tigers in late July.

As a reliever, he was even better. In a total of 13 relief appearances, Lauer surrendered just six runs across 30.2 innings, which comes out to a sparkling ERA of 1.76. Notably, he only threw one innings or less three times all year long, which shows that he’s capable of being more than just a short-stint middle-reliever. No, we’re looking at a multi-inning weapon, which is something all teams could use in their ‘pen.

Of course, it can’t be as simple as Lauer excelling as a reliever and sticking in that role. No, rumor has it that he’s not thrilled with being bounced from the 2026 rotation, and that he’d prefer to start games. You can’t exactly blame him, as he did more than enough to earn a(nother) look in the coming season, but it’s clear he wants one thing and the Blue Jays want another.

The fact of the matter is that Lauer’s been a regression candidate since the moment he wrapped up his 2025 campaign. He’s a seven-year veteran that’s only posted an ERA+ north of 100 (league average) two times outside of this past season. The Blue Jays have rather obviously felt that he’s a solid candidate to come back down to earth, so they made the right choice bringing in additional starters this winter (Ponce, Cease, Scherzer) to effectively push the left-hander out of a guaranteed spot.

The Blue Jays are no strangers to having players be less than thrilled with the roles they’re given. Sometimes it works out, but there are also relationships that don’t get mended as well (see: Alek Manoah). If they can afford to keep Lauer around in a swingman role, great. If he insists on starting before he requests a trade, the team would be wise to sell high before that regression sets in.

What About Moving Berríos?

Another possibility could involve the Blue Jays moving on from Berríos, who’d been solid as a rock in Toronto prior to this past year when he experienced a statistical regression of his own.

Berríos, 31, was acquired from the Minnesota Twins in 2021 and then extended on a seven-year deal in November of that same year. Since then, he’s quietly gone about his business and been the very definition of a workhorse.

Still, it was hard for fans of the Blue Jays to ignore when he still made 30 starts in 2025 but also had 30 less innings than he did the year prior. His ERA jumped from 3.60 to 4.17, and his FIP remained in the high-4.00s for the second straight season. Walks and hits were a bigger issue for him than they had been in the past too, so there was a combination of factors that showed he wasn’t himself last year.

Berríos wound up leaving the Blue Jays and returning home to Puerto Rico during their World Series run, which ruffled plenty of feathers. He’s back in camp, has apologized to his teammates, and it seems that everyone’s ready to turn the page. It’s likely that the Blue Jays would be happy to find a trade partner for him, but it’s going to be difficult to move him and the large sum of money he’s still owed.

While Berríos has an opt-out after the coming season, it’s highly unlikely he exercises it, unless he has a shocking turnaround in 2026. He will make $18.7 million in 2026 before earning $24.7 million in both 2027 and 2028. That’s not a small amount. Sure, there are teams out there that make some sense (including his former team over in Minnesota), but Berríos is going to be much harder to move than Lauer.

Closing Thoughts

Between Lauer and Berríos, the former is much more tradeable due to a whole slew of reasons. He’s got much more recent success on the mound, he’s younger, and he’s far cheaper than his counterpart.

The Blue Jays have a handful of players that could step in and fill a Lauer-like role in the coming campaign, including a pair of arms that were at one point shiny top prospects in Ricky Tiedemann and Adam Macko. Health is going to be key for each of them, but seeing them in a multi-inning relief role with occasional spot starts feels highly likely.

There’s also Yariel Rodríguez, who has fallen from grace a bit but remains in the high-minors. Jesse Hahn, Josh Fleming, Michael Plassmeyer, and Connor Seabold are all also experienced arms in camp as non-roster invitees. Any of them could come out of nowhere like Lauer himself did a year ago and surprise people.

Regardless of how this shakes out, it’s going to be immensely difficult for the Blue Jays to sit still. Scherzer’s reunion makes a trade all the more likely, and it might be wise for the club to make their move soon so a replacement arm has enough time to shine in spring training before the regular season arrives.

It’s true, you can never have enough pitching, but the Blue Jays may just be sitting in a position where they’ve got to let an excess arm go.