Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer pitch in the same game: ‘I think we all got a kick out of it’

PORT ST. LUCIE — If you’re wondering how Max Scherzer (a future Hall of Famer) is making Jacob deGrom (a two-time Cy Young winner) better, look no further than deGrom’s three consecutive curveballs to Alec Burleson on Sunday.

DeGrom throws his curveball rarely—he used it just .3% of the time in 2021, according to Baseball Savant—but Scherzer has recently inspired him to sharpen that pitch, which would only make deGrom’s arsenal that much more lethal. And since there’s no better time than spring training to try some pitches out, deGrom managed to throw four curveballs as part of his three-inning start against the Cardinals. The right-hander is keeping fans in suspense on whether he will use his curveball more in the regular season.

“Seeing how he prepares and his game plan of looking at the lineup before he goes out there,” deGrom said of what he’s learned so far from Scherzer. “So just talking over those things. He’s been in this league a long time and he’s faced these guys a bunch, so to learn how he goes after them is big.”

But these were just the peripheral details during Sunday’s matinee at Clover Park, a game that deGrom started and Scherzer finished.

The Mets’ longtime ace and upcoming Opening Day starter threw the first three innings and 52 pitches, followed by Scherzer’s six innings and 89 pitches to close the game. Together, the multi-Cy Young winners amassed 12 strikeouts; seven from Scherzer and five from deGrom. Scherzer allowed three of St. Louis’ seven hits, including a ninth-inning home run to Cardinals third baseman Anderson Tejada.

“I think we all got a kick out of it,” Scherzer said of pitching behind deGrom in the same game. “I mean, I’m coming out of the ‘pen in spring.”

It was hard to find a single empty seat at Clover Park as fans packed out the stadium Sunday, with some even flooding the walkways along the main concourse. The berm in right-center field was completely coated with fans laid out on towels, posted up on portable chairs, or pressed against the fence in hopes of catching a home run.

As deGrom toed the hill to face his final batter in the third inning, Mets manager Buck Showalter said he got a call from the bullpen coach saying Scherzer was ready to come in, in relief of deGrom, if the skipper needed him to. Though Showalter said no, and let deGrom finish the third, the manager wondered whether the always-intense Scherzer would still insist on jogging into the game.

“There was a good chance that the gate was going to open and it was going to be Max, anyway,” joked Showalter.

In his second spring start, Scherzer had the clearance from pitching coach Jeremy Hefner to stretch out up to 95 pitches. The Mets had a reliever warming up in case Scherzer crossed that threshold, but the right-hander was determined to finish his six innings and continue his routine ramp-up in spring. His next time out, Scherzer is expected to go seven innings and 100 pitches in his third and final Grapefruit League outing before he starts against the Nationals in his Mets debut on April 8.

While fans enjoyed the unique deGrom-Scherzer day, one that may only happen again in Game 7 of the World Series, in reality the two aces weren’t really able to see each other work. When deGrom was pitching, Scherzer was doing his own thing, warming up for his own outing. And when Scherzer was pitching, deGrom was going through his post game routine. Showalter, fiercely locked in to each game he manages, even wished he had a different seat for Sunday’s show.

“It was fun to watch, but I wished I could’ve been in the stands and watched it, from an entertainment standpoint,” the Mets manager said. “It wasn’t something we did because we felt we needed to increase the attendance. Just how it fell, and how it best served the way we’re going in the future.”

The deGrom-Scherzer game that will go down as a spring training classic was manufactured so that the Mets could line up their rotation for the first week of the regular season. But that minutiae doesn’t really matter to Mets fans, who watched their aces provide a glimpse of the magic they can accomplish when they’re pitching on a rotation together.