Max Scherzer downplays start being pushed back, but Mets' gamble on aging aces can't be

Outside the visitor's clubhouse in Oakland, Buck Showalter was doing his best to sound matter-of-fact as he told reporters Max Scherzer’s scheduled Sunday start is being pushed back to Wednesday because of soreness below his scapula.

Even though the manager surely knew that any injury news regarding Scherzer is enough to create a sense of panic among Mets fans.

“He’s fine,” Showalter said. “He could pitch (Sunday) but we’re using the extra starter anyway, so we figured we’d on the safe side.”

It’s true the Mets have been planning on using a sixth starter to give the others an extra day of rest during this stretch of 10 straight games, which is why Jose Butto will start Sunday in Oakland.

But obviously the fact that Scherzer is pitching Wednesday and not Monday is a bit alarming, even if Scherzer too insisted there was no cause for concern, noting that he’d dealt with the same injury in 2019.

“If you give it a little rest, get it out of there, it goes away,” he told reporters.

Perhaps that will prove to be true, but it’s always safe to bet the over when it comes to time missed due to pitching injuries, especially a pitcher who is closing in on age 39 with a track record in recent years of fighting off various ailments.

However soon Scherzer is back, the injury news is a bit more worrisome because he hasn’t been his dominant self so far this season, making you wonder if age is taking its toll.

He was bombed in Milwaukee two starts ago and then had to use every trick in his book to get through five scoreless innings on 97 pitches against the San Diego Padres on Monday.

Now this news, which can’t be considered shocking. Injuries have become a pattern the last few years for Scherzer, mostly body parts other than his arm, including his oblique that cost him two stints on the IL last season and may have compromised him in his brutal wild-card start.

By all accounts, nobody works harder at conditioning than Scherzer, but there’s only so much he can do to ward off the effects of more than 2,800 big-league innings, including the postseason. Especially for someone famous for pitching with such high intensity and maximum effort.

Of course, this is the gamble the Mets took in relying so heavily on two aging aces, Scherzer and Justin Verlander, who still hasn’t pitched this season due to an injury that he too insisted was as “teensy” in nature when it was announced more than two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, what we’ve seen so far from the 2023 Mets is only more evidence they are going to need good health and dominance from their $43 million starters to have any chance of winning a championship.

The Fighting Showalters are 9-6 after Saturday’s 3-2 win over the A’s, the worst team in baseball, and while the offense has been spotty, the pitching concerns were becoming more of a storyline even before the news on Scherzer.

Carlos Carrasco was a bit better Saturday than his first two starts, but he survived only five-plus innings, which is the heart of the matter for these Mets.

That is, the bullpen again did the job, but as has been the case too often, Showalter had to use all of his Big Four relievers, Drew Smith, Brooks Raley, Adam Ottavino, and David Robertson to lock down the win.

And because the manager isn’t going to overuse his relievers, and rightly so, especially early in the season, he has had to hope for the best while using low-leverage relievers at times in games that were still very winnable.

Case in point: waiver pick-up Dennis Santana is not the guy you want late in a one-run game, but there he was Tuesday night against the Padres, pitching the ninth inning with the Mets down 2-1.

Until it was 4-1 when he gave up two runs, making the run the Mets scored in the bottom of the ninth irrelevant.

It’s those kinds of moves that teams with deep bullpens and strong starting rotations can avoid and pick up an extra who knows how many wins over the course of the season.

The Mets have a relatively deep pen, though obviously it’s compromised without Edwin Diaz, but their big problem so far is the strain their starters are putting on that pen.

In their 15 games so far, a starter has gone six innings only three times -- once each by Scherzer, Tylor Megill, and Kodai Senga. No starter has gone more than six.

Overall, the rotation is averaging just 5.1 innings per start and that’s a recipe for frying a bullpen before too long.

You’d expect starter-length to get better as the Mets get deeper into the season, but then again, it’s hard to say that with great confidence right now.

Consider that: age seems to be catching up with Carrasco; David Peterson’s control issues continue to limit his potential; Megill has looked good but has a lot to prove; and while Senga’s ghost fork has lived up to the hype, so far, he hasn’t gone deep into games and has only faced the Marlins and A’s in his three starts.

All of which is why the Mets desperately need Scherzer and Verlander to be their old selves this season. Not old pitchers prone to injury.

But maybe Scherzer is right and it’s just smart to be cautious with this latest injury. Maybe it will prove to be as insignificant as he tried to make it sound.

I just have a feeling most Mets’ fans will only believe it when they see it.