Blue Jays’ Max Scherzer Contradicts Manager With ‘Season-Ending Injury’ Update

April 2, 2026 · Yahoo Sports

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - MAY 8: Max Scherzer #31 of the Toronto Blue Jays looks on in the dugout in the sixth inning during a game against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on May 8, 2025 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Brandon Sloter/Getty Images)

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Shortly after their World Series run ended in a Game 7 defeat, the Toronto Blue Jays rapidly accumulated starting pitchers.

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The team learned that Shane Bieber would be opting back into his contract, it signed free agents Dylan Cease and Cody Ponce and then it welcomed back Max Scherzer. Along with the returns of Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios and Eric Lauer, plus the ascendance of Trey Yesavage, it briefly appeared as if the team might have an excess of starting pitching.

But then the injury bug struck and the team opened the season with Bieber, Berrios and Yesavage all on the injured list. Then, in the third inning of his first start on Monday, Ponce went down with what appeared to be a significant injury, and suddenly the team’s depth was called into question.

“For the next decade, we’ll point back to the 2026 Blue Jays as the case study for pitching depth. You can never, ever have enough of it, even if you’re close to rostering two full big league rotations,” Keegan Maethson wrote for MLB.com. “Already down Trey Yesavage, José Berríos and Shane Bieber, the Blue Jays lost Cody Ponce Monday night to a right ACL sprain that could potentially end his season just moments after it began. The Blue Jays’ IL has a better rotation than some teams do, making the handful of healthy starters remaining more important than ever.”

Toronto Blue Jays Superstar Max Scherzer Offers 4-Word Response On ‘Season-Ending’ Cody Ponce Injury

As the Blue Jays scramble to sustain their rotation with their injured pitchers recovering, it wasn’t immediately clear when Ponce might return to the mound. Manager John Schneider told the media that he would be visiting an orthopedic surgeon next week to decide whether or not surgery would be required.

If Ponce were to have surgery to repair his ACL, he’d likely be ruled out for the rest of the season.

But as Ponce and the Blue Jays awaited the results of that appointment, Scherzer indicated that his teammate’s season was indeed over.

“It’s a gut punch,” Scherzer said of Ponce’s knee injury on Wednesday, according to the Toronto Star’s Mike Wilner. “It’s the worst part of sports, when somebody has a season-ending injury.”

Toronto Blue Jays’ Cody Ponce ‘Openly Discussing’ Upcoming Knee Surgery

Wilner added that Ponce was “openly discussing his impending knee surgery” while the media was in the team’s clubhouse before Wednesday’s game against the Colorado Rockies. So it seems possible that, even though the team’s official line is that the potential of surgery is still to be determined, it is a foregone conclusion in Ponce’s mind and that is where Scherzer’s contradiction came from.

”(Ponce) put himself in position to finally come over here, get back and show his improvement, show how he had levelled up and unfortunately now he doesn’t (get to do that),” Scherzer added, according to Wilner. “It stinks, that’s the worst-case scenario. We’re humans, we feel for him. It just stinks all the way around.”

Though Schneider has not officially ruled Ponce out for the rest of the season, Scherzer certainly seemed to believe he would be done for the year.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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