Max Scherzer is one of the legends of the game of baseball. He has been one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball in recent years, winning the Cy Young three times, and is certainly bound for the Hall of Fame.
But does that success on the baseball field translate to success in team poker games? It seems the answer to that question is no.
Scherzer joined his former Washington Nationals teammates Jayson Werth and Shawn Kelley on their “Off the Rail” podcast, which focuses on horse racing, baseball, and gambling.
In a lengthy 30-minute discussion, the part of note and interest to poker fans was the topic that came up around the 20-minute mark when Kelley mentioned serious poker games on the Nationals team plane back in 2015.
2015 Nationals Poker Games
“Those 2015 games were big,” recalled Scherzer. “That was a real game. I lost enough that I called up (Scott) Boras (his agent) and I was like ‘I gotta do some signings’. I lost so much’”.
It has long been known that pro athletes of all sports like to take out their competitive juices in the form of high-stakes poker games on team buses or planes. There have been stories through the years and this seems to fit in perfectly with the continuous narrative.
Scherzer made sure to tell his agent Scott Boras, one of the most prominent agents in sports, that he would need to recuperate some serious makeup for the poker losses.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I’ve gotta make this back,'” Scherzer continued. “You gotta send me some stickers and cards, like I gotta sign 1,000 or 2,000 cards to break even — I gotta get a side hustle to cover the bird. Trying to chase a flush against you guys was dangerous.”
How Much Did Scherzer Lose?
One has to wonder just how big those cash games were among multi-millionaire players, especially in the case of Scherzer who was one of the highest paid players in the game, with a worth in the hundreds of millions. But they were apparently big enough for Scherzer to actually feel the damage of the losses.
The poker games were apparently part of a year-long process for the Nationals as they kept track of wins and losses throughout the year and made sure to settle them up at the end of a season.
Interestingly, Scherzer did not seem to discuss any big winnings in these poker games, instead focusing on the losses instead. Sounds like the future Hall of Famer may have had some tougher times in the poker streets than he did on the mound. Retirement is on the horizon, so he’ll have plenty of time to properly learn how to play Texas Hold’em.