Max Scherzer is 42 years old. Wednesday night, he pitched like it was still 2013.
The future Hall of Famer anchored a Toronto win over Detroit, 5-1, taking his 21.0 fantasy points and turning what had been a rough recent stretch against these two clubs into a laugher. The Blue Jays needed it. After dropping two tough decisions to Detroit earlier in the week — a nail-biter loss and a lopsided loss — Toronto finally put together a complete performance, at the plate and on the mound, and reasserted itself just one week into the season.
Scherzer set the tone early, working efficiently and missing enough bats to keep the Tigers off balance all night. It was the kind of outing that reminds everyone why Toronto's rotation is a problem for opponents even in September of his career. Louis Varland backed him up out of the bullpen, adding 11.0 fantasy points and slamming the door to make sure a Detroit rally never got any oxygen.
Offensively, the Blue Jays didn't need fireworks — they needed traffic on the bases and timely hits, and they got both. Brett Bateman was the headliner among the position players, posting 13.0 fantasy points out of center field in a game where every extra-base knock felt like it deflated the Tigers dugout a little more. Josh Smith chipped in 11.5 points, and catcher Brandon Valenzuela matched him at 11.5, giving Toronto production up and down the lineup rather than relying on one or two bats to carry the load.
Nathan Lukes and Ernie Clement rounded out the complementary pieces with 8.8 and 8.5 points, respectively, while Vladimir Guerrero Jr. added 8.0. It wasn't a Vlad-sized night by his standards, but on a night when the pitching staff did the heavy lifting, Toronto didn't need him to be the whole story. This was a total team performance, front to back.
Detroit, meanwhile, has to be encouraged by an outing from Keider Montero, who led the Tigers with 15.0 fantasy points despite ending up on the wrong side of the scoreboard. Montero kept his club within shouting distance for stretches, but a lack of run support ultimately buried him in the box score. Colt Keith was the one true bright spot in Detroit's lineup, putting up 14.5 fantasy points and looking like the one hitter Toronto's pitching staff genuinely had to work around. Spencer Torkelson added 10.5, and Riley Greene chipped in 8.5, but beyond that trio, the Tigers' offense went quiet in a hurry. Gleyber Torres and Max Clark managed just 5.0 and 4.5 points, and Detroit's lineup simply never found a consistent rhythm against Toronto's arms.
The larger story here is about direction. Coming into Wednesday, Toronto had dropped two straight to Detroit, making this response all the more meaningful early in the season. That momentum stalled out hard against Scherzer and a Toronto pitching staff that looked considerably sharper. For a Blue Jays club that had dropped a pair of frustrating one-run and lopsided losses earlier in the week, this was the response game — the one that shows the roster can weather a rough stretch without unraveling into September panic in what's still just Week 1 of the schedule.
For Detroit, the concern isn't Montero, who did his job. It's a lineup that leaned almost entirely on Keith and Torkelson while the rest of the order went stagnant. If that pattern repeats, wins will be hard to come by against clubs with pitching like Toronto trotted out Wednesday.
Early in a long season, one night doesn't reshape a standings picture. But it does set a tone. Toronto reminded its own fanbase, and Detroit's, that the pitching staff is postseason-caliber even in the dog days, and that the lineup has more than enough thump to make life difficult on visiting arms. Detroit will need a bounce-back response — and fast — if it wants this early-season series to mean anything by the time the calendar turns.
For fantasy managers who rostered Scherzer, Bateman or Varland on JockBroker, Wednesday was about as good as Week 1 gets.
