Lineup Builder: Max Scherzer’s Worst Nightmare

All stats via Baseball Reference

Everyone knows Max Scherzer.  Missouri’s own Mad Max.  3x Cy Young award winner and two-time World Series champ, this future Hall of Famer has wreaked havoc on the league for the better part of 18 seasons.  Two years with the Diamondbacks, five years with the Tigers, six and a half years with the Nationals, a half season with the Dodgers, a year and a half each with the Mets and the Rangers, and finally with this year being his first with the Blue Jays.  At all of those stops, he’s been recognized as one of the most fearsome pitchers to step on the mound.

As a man inching closer to 3500 career strikeouts, many hitters can say he got the best of them.  But what hitters can say they got the best of Max Scherzer.  To be considered, you’ve got to have at least 30 PAs against the legend.  There aren’t many, but we’ve got enough here to field a lineup.  Let’s take a look:

We’ve got a couple current guys still mashing, like Harper, Salvy Perez, and Christian Yelich.  As a matter of fact, Big Salvy just homered off Max on August 2nd.  There are some great names on this list.  I wonder if you asked Max, would he pick out some of these guys as his toughest opponents?

Some honorable mentions were guys like David Ortiz, Jose Bautista, and Jay Bruce, but they didn’t quite hit the 30 PA mark.

But as always, we’ll give Max his flowers here at the end with the batters who hate to see him on the rubber:

I realize Carlos Santana is not a left fielder but Max was dominating so many first basemen I didn’t have room to put all these guys in hypothetical positions.  Also, I didn’t bother putting them in a real lineup because, ultimately, I don’t think it will matter.  Scherzer has shown pure domination over these hitters.

Who’s next?