Max Scherzer makes his 500th career pitching appearance -- will it be his last?

Clayton Kershaw retired after last season and Justin Verlander is hanging it up after this year; could Scherzer be next?

Sep 23, 2026 at 4:14 pm ET • 2 min read

When Blue Jays right-hander and future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer first took the bump for his start against the Orioles on Wednesday, he joined elite company. That's because the eventual five-inning effort, in which Scherzer allowed four runs on four hits, marked his 500th career game pitched. Of those 500 games on the mound, 491 have been starts. Scherzer is now the 451st pitcher to reach 500 games pitched, but just 54 pitchers in all MLB history have made more starts. 

At age 42 and with a second straight injury-compromised and sub-par season in the books, it's fair to wonder whether Scherzer's career is over. As of Wednesday's effort, Scherzer has an ERA of 6.14 for the season, and that's coming off a 2025 campaign in which he had a 5.19 ERA in 17 starts for Toronto. Among active MLB pitchers, only Justin Verlander is older, and he's already announced his plans to retire at season's end. Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw called it quits after last season at age 37 and coming off a third World Series ring. In that sense, Scherzer is, until further notice, the last of a generation of aces who fit the time-honored definition of the label in terms of excellence and workload. 

While there have been flashes of the old Scherzer this season -- a veritable gem on Aug. 30 against the Mariners in which he twirled seven scoreless and struck out 10, for example -- the season-long body of work isn't up to anyone's standards.

"I don't know if I want to publicly say, yet. I'd rather keep the blinders up and address once the season's over," Scherzer recently told Sportsnet. "I'm not limping to the finish line, I'm accelerating through the finish line.. want to keep the focus on just getting to finish line."

The much larger body of work, what he's done across the vast majority of those 500 games, makes him a first-ballot Hall of Famer. If this is the end for "Mad Max," then he'll step away with a titan's load of accomplishments, including: 

• Three Cy Young awards;
• Eight All-Star selections;
• A career WAR of 74.3;
• The ninth-most strikeouts all-time;
• More than 3,000 innings pitched;
• The 10th-best K/BB ratio all-time;
• 224 wins;
• Two World Series rings.

If Wednesday's start was indeed the last glimpse of Scherzer on a big-league mound, then it was reflective of the new version of the erstwhile ace. Manager John Schneider said pregame that there's a chance Scherzer could pitch on Sunday on short rest, a chance for a final start in front of the home Blue Jays crowd and possibly add a few more strikeouts to his career total (he finished on Wednesday with 3,550, four shy of Verlander for eighth all time).

As for the Jays, Wednesday's loss eliminated them from the playoffs. Scherzer's was not exactly a fitting end to such a great career, but that's so often the case with all-time greats who toil for so long. And Scherzer is nothing if not that: an all-time great whose career should be remembered as such.