Detroit Tigers Former Star Suffers Latest Injury in First Start with Blue Jays

This former Detroit Tigers Cy Young Award winner has struggled with injuries, which have continued into his stint with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Oct 2, 2014; Baltimore, MD, USA; Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Max Scherzer (37) pitches in game one of the 2014 American League divisional series against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. | Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images

The Detroit Tigers have finally found one of their long-term solutions in the pitching staff, with Tarik Skubal showing signs of being an elite high-end starter.

With the Tigers having gone through somewhat of a retooling phase in recent years, they desperately needed to find a starter who could hold the weight left behind by players from their past era, most notably Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer.

Scherzer left Detroit back in January of 2015, where he would sign a mega-deal with the Washington Nationals that was for seven years, $210 million. Scherzer would go on to play all seven years of that deal out, and would become a franchise legend for a second team by age 36.

However, in recent years things have begun to fall apart as he grew closer to his age 40 season, with injuries piling up. He is beginning to become more of a liability to his new teams than an asset when it comes to his pitching.

His walk numbers have inflated since 2023, allowing 45 of them in a season for the first time since his 2018 All-Star campaign which included almost 70 more innings pitched.

Now with the Toronto Blue Jays, he only had the opportunity to throw 45 pitches on Saturday before being placed on the 15-day Injured List with a thumb injury.

After starting only nine games in 2024, it seems his 2025 is not off to a much better start with an injury that will now require him to see a hand specialist on Monday, as was reported by Keegan Matheson of MLB.com.

While this is not much of a situation where Detroit lucked out by not re-signing him as it is much further down the road than when he was last with the team, it is unfortunate given how important he was to the team all those years ago.

After playing in 161 games for the Tigers across five seasons, he has only been able to play in 71 since leaving the Nationals mid-way through 2021, across four different teams.

His success over the course of 17 full seasons is outstanding, and he is no doubt one of the best pitchers of this generation. But, he is beginning to reach a point where injuries are catching up with him. Hopefully he is able to overcome this thumb issue and get back on the mound for a little bit, but it is not the first injury he has picked up the past few seasons.