Max Scherzer Sets Blue Jays Fantasy Football Draft Order With Radar Gun and Support Staff
Max Scherzer is 41 years old, on the Blue Jays’ pitching staff, and apparently one of the most creative fantasy football commissioners in professional sports.
The three-time Cy Young winner runs Toronto’s fantasy league and needed a way to set the draft order this year. He landed on something great. Every player was paired with a member of the Blue Jays’ off-field support staff, and the draft order was determined by how hard each staff member could throw a baseball. Hardest thrower gets the first pick.
Manager John Schneider grabbed the radar gun himself to run the whole operation. This is peak baseball clubhouse energy, and it is why nobody covers fantasy football drafts the way MLB players do.
Why This Is Perfect
Fantasy draft order fights are a real thing. Ask any office league. Somebody always feels cheated. Scherzer’s method removes every argument because the players themselves have zero influence over who throws hard. It also puts the outcome in the hands of guys who almost never get the spotlight, which is a fun little gift.
The Blue Jays have a history here. Tim Mayza famously lost a fantasy football league punishment a few years back and had to wear an embarrassing outfit in public. The stakes in that clubhouse are real. This is not a bunch of casual friends running a $20 buy-in.
Scherzer has never been someone who half-measures anything. His preparation for actual starts is a Yankees-Red Sox level of intensity. So of course he took the fantasy football draft order and turned it into a whole event. Anything Max does gets treated like the World Series.
The Reality of a Long Season
Toronto is fighting to stay in the AL wild card picture. The team just added Kyle Tucker and has been leaning on veteran pitching to hold up through a brutal AL East schedule. Scherzer himself has been on and off the injured list, but he is still contributing when he is healthy.
Moments like the fantasy draft matter more than fans realize. A clubhouse that pulls together tends to play tighter down the stretch. A locker room that fractures usually shows it in the standings. The Blue Jays are getting the good version of clubhouse chemistry right now, and it starts with veterans like Scherzer who understand the culture side of the job.
The Bigger Picture
Baseball players have always been the most creative fantasy football participants because they have the free time other athletes do not. Between innings, in bullpens, on team flights. There is a lot of downtime, and elite athletes always find a way to compete during it.
Scherzer is likely in the last stretch of his career. He is not chasing a lot of history at this point. But he is clearly still finding ways to enjoy the day-to-day of a big league season. Watching him rig up a radar gun contest to build his league’s draft order is the kind of thing that will follow him into retirement as a fun story people keep repeating.
No word yet on who ended up with the first pick. But whichever Blue Jay is going to be building his lineup around Ja’Marr Chase this year owes the strongest support staffer at the Rogers Centre a nice thank you.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
