Eight-time All-Star pitcher Max Scherzer of the Texas Rangers will miss the rest of the Major League Baseball season with a low-grade muscle strain, the team announced Wednesday.
The 39-year-old US right-hander, a three-time winner of the Cy Young Award as a season’s top pitcher, is also unlikely to compete in the playoffs if Texas advances, Rangers general manager Chris Young said.
Scherzer suffered a low-grade strain in his right teres major muscle, which connects the arm to the upper body.
Scherzer, who won a World Series title in 2019 with the Washington Nationals, exited after 5 1/3 innings in Texas’ 6-3 win in Toronto on Tuesday with what was diagnosed as a right triceps spasm.
“It’s starting to tighten. It’s like a charley horse,” he said. “All of a sudden it’s in my triceps back in my shoulder.
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“When I got on the mound and tried to keep my momentum going, I just knew. I tried to keep it going. I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to throw another baseball so I had to come out. at that point.”
The Rangers acquired Scherzer from the New York Mets at the July trade deadline and since his arrival he has gone 4-2 with a 3.20 earned run average and 53 strikeouts in 45 innings.
Scherzer, who led the MLB in season wins four times and the National League strikeouts three times, has enjoyed an epic career since his 2008 MLB debut in Arizona. He also pitched for Detroit, Washington and the Los Angeles Dodgers before joining the Mets last year.
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His loss comes as the Rangers battle for an MLB playoff berth with less than three weeks left in the six-month season.
At 80-64, the Rangers are just one game behind Houston in the battle for the American League West division title.
They have the second of the three American League wild-card playoff positions at the halfway mark against division-rivals Seattle and Toronto, both 80-65.