Fearless in Seattle: Jays beat Mariners in Game 4 to tie series at 2-2

 In the uneasy quiet of the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse after the Seattle Mariners had opened a 2-0 lead in the American League Championship Series, Max Scherzer stood in front of his corner locker and dropped some knowledge.

Over nearly two decades in the majors, he’d seen enough to know that fortunes can turn quickly in the post-season. “All of a sudden, this is a three-game series out in Seattle and that can be a completely different set of circumstances, games unfolding in different ways than they unfolded here,” he said then. “As disappointing as these first two games were, this is baseball, things can change on a dime.”

Lo and behold, as if spoken into existence by the future Hall of Famer, they very much have, both for the Blue Jays, suddenly tied 2-2 in the best-of-seven series after a 8-2 win over the Seattle Mariners, and himself, returning to the mound after a 3½-week absence with a vintage Mad Max outing, all-out agro plows through the dugout and on-mound snarls at manager John Schneider included.

Combined with another game-changing two-run homer from Andres Gimenez, some scratch-and-claw add-on runs and a late solo shot by a back in the groove Vladimir Guerrero Jr., this ALCS is now a best-of-three, with a Kevin Gausman-Bryce Miller rematch set for Friday’s Game 5.

Things can, indeed, change on a dime and Scherzer played a key role in pulling the Blue Jays level before a stunned T-Mobile Park crowd of 46,981.

Left off the roster for the ALDS victory over the New York Yankees after allowing 25 runs in 25 innings over his final six starts of the regular season, Scherzer drew back in for this round after using the downtime to get right physically. 

A neck issue had helped prevent him from finishing his pitches the way he wanted, hampering location and the sharpness of his breaking ball, and while he refused to “point the finger at anything ailment-wise of why I was pitching bad — I was pitching bad,” he said, a difference was evident to the Blue Jays when he threw a simulated game last week.

“If we weren’t comfortable with him being normal,” said Schneider, “he wouldn’t have been on the roster.”

Scherzer was better than normal during his first game action since Sept. 24, when he allowed four runs in five innings during a 7-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox. He set the tone in the first inning, throwing his hardest pitch of the season, a 96.5 m.p.h. fastball to Cal Raleigh, and worked around a pair of walks by getting Jorge Polanco to hit into a double play.

He surrendered a homer to Josh Naylor leading off the second, briefly putting the Mariners up 1-0, but rolled from that point forward as the Blue Jays offence chewed up Luis Castillo.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa, starting after Anthony Santander was subbed out due to lumbar spine inflammation and replaced with Joey Loperfido, opened the second with a double and Gimenez followed by yanking a 3-2 slider over the wall in right for a 2-1 lead. 

A Daulton Varsho bases-loaded walk later in the inning extended the lead, George Springer ripped an RBI double and later scored on a Matt Brash wild pitch to make it 5-1 in the fourth, Guerrero went deep in the seventh while Gimenez, a leading contender for ALCS MVP honours, added a two-run single in the eighth.

Scherzer, meanwhile, kept pushing back the clock with what could be his legacy Blue Jays outing. He erased a leadoff Leo Rivas walk in the third by picking him off, put up another zero in the fourth and then, with one and two out in the fifth, provided meme-makers a scene for the ages when he yelled no at Schneider as he approached at the arm and then growled at him like a lion stalking prey.

Schneider stuck with his right-hander, Ernie Clement grinning as he returned to third base from the mound visit, and Scherzer responded by striking out Randy Arozarena to end the inning.

He wasn’t done there, either, coming back out for the sixth when he got Raleigh on a fly ball to right, struck out Julio Rodriguez for a second time and then departed after a two-out walk to Polanco. No roaring at Schneider this time.

Mason Fluharty walked Naylor and gave up an RBI single to Eugenio Suarez, but Addison Barger extinguished the rally by throwing Naylor out at third to end the inning. The Blue Jays quickly got that run back and more and closed out a second straight win.

And so, an ALCS that looked like it might end fast is now guaranteed to return to Toronto for a Game 6, at least, a new series, with the same old Scherzer.