Scherzer's Return From Forearm Injury Lands Soft Pitching Matchup—Take the Under

Max Scherzer returns to the mound Wednesday night against Philadelphia after spending the past six weeks on the injured list with right forearm tendinitis and left ankle inflammation. The 41-year-old's IL stint follows a catastrophic April 24 start against Cleveland—seven runs on three homers in 2.1 innings, zero strikeouts—that prompted the team to shut him down. He's thrown two minor-league rehab appearances since, the final one last Friday in Buffalo where he logged 3.2 innings on 73 pitches with a fastball that sat 93.4 mph and peaked at 95.7 mph.

Those velocity readings offer a surface-level comfort signal, but they mask the larger deterioration. Scherzer hasn't been a reliable starter since 2022. This season, across five regular-season appearances, he's 1-3 with a 9.46 ERA—a number that would lead baseball by a significant margin if he had the innings to qualify. In 18.2 innings, he's struck out only 10 batters while surrendering 22 hits and eight walks. Opposing hitters are batting .500 with a 1.786 OPS with runners in scoring position, a sign that his command breaks down precisely when leverage spikes. The Blue Jays themselves are 1-4 in his five starts this season. Bettors backing Toronto in every Scherzer appearance would be down $364 on $100 wagers.

The Blue Jays' rotation situation is improving—Dylan Cease returned from the IL Tuesday and pitched well, and Shane Bieber (a former AL Cy Young winner) makes his season debut this weekend—which explains why Toronto has deployed Scherzer in a limited role. He's not asked to be dominant; he's asked to eat innings and limit bullpen strain. That assignment is baked into SportsLine's projection: 4.3 innings, 3.7 strikeouts, 4.3 hits allowed, and 2.1 earned runs. The sportsbooks have set his outs total at 14.5, implying a departure around the fourth or fifth inning depending on pitch efficiency.

The Phillies counter with Jesus Luzardo, a 28-year-old lefty who enters with a 4.55 ERA and a documented pattern of wild swings between competent and catastrophic outings. Against a Philadelphia lineup that doesn't have an obvious platoon advantage against Luzardo and faces an opponent running a hobbled pitcher on a strict pitch count, the under on the game total carries real value. Scherzer's projection alone (4.3 innings, 2.1 runs) anchors the total. Even if Luzardo matches a modest outing and the bullpens stay clean, reaching eight or nine runs demands offensive execution neither team has shown consistently in this matchup. The rubber match Wednesday sits at a number built on historical Scherzer standards, not his current reality.

The parlay structure from the source (Phillies under 10.5 runs in first race to 3 total runs) is a tighter construction that pays +146 at FanDuel, but the straight game under—if it's available in the 7.5 to 8 range—offers cleaner risk-reward. Scherzer's restricted innings alone compress scoring potential, and Luzardo's volatility suggests neither offense will execute a consistent attack. The edge here persists because it's grounded in pitch-count management and a degraded starter's mechanical trajectory, not a single-game outlier.