The Mets are paying Max Scherzer to be peak Max Scherzer — the one who won three Cy Young Awards, probably deserved another, and could retire tomorrow and still go into the Hall of Fame. It’s just not that likely he’ll still be that guy for his age 37 to 39 seasons.
The Mets absolutely needed another starter, and given the loss of Marcus Stroman and their obvious intention to compete for the NL East next year, they had to shop on the top shelf this time around. Scherzer actually led all free-agent starters in fWAR with 5.4, although he was behind Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman in Baseball Reference’s version. His slider remains among the majors’ best, ranking fourth among all sliders in FanGraphs’ pitch values in 2021, while his fastball and changeup are also both plus, with the latter pitch the most effective it had been for him since 2018. He’ll replace what the Mets have lost with Stroman, maybe with fewer innings but comparable performance when he pitches. This gives the Mets a front four in their rotation that lines up well against any other contender, and creates competition for the fifth spot between Tylor Megill, David Peterson, and Trevor Williams, assuming they don’t sign another starter.
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That said, this deal carries far more risk than Scherzer’s 2021 production might imply. As great as he is, he’s getting older, as we all are, and that matters when a pitcher is approaching 40. The $43.3 million AAV is a record for a pitcher, and implies that the Mets expect league-leading production from him. The typical league leader among pitchers is around 7 WAR, and that’s a very high bar for any starter, more so for a 37-year-old coming off a 5.2 WAR season. The last time a pitcher 37 or older posted even a 5-WAR season was in 2013, when Bartolo Colon did it, one of just three times it’s happened in the last twelve full seasons. Only three pitchers since World War II have posted 7 WAR seasons at 38 or older — Randy Johnson, Phil Niekro and Roger Clemens, each one of whom was an outlier in a very clear and specific way that doesn’t apply to Scherzer. Since 2000, there have been just 12 pitcher seasons in total by a pitcher 38 or older worth 5 WAR or more.
Scherzer could outperform 95 percent of pitchers his age through MLB history and still underperform relative to the contract. Good for him for getting paid, but the idea in free agency is to pay for expected future production, not past production, and the base rate for pitchers his age is not promising. They either lose effectiveness, or they get hurt. Maybe Scherzer is an outlier, just like the race isn’t always to the swift or the battle to the strong. That’s just the way to bet.
You can like this addition for the Mets and still recognize the contract carries a lot of risk. Maybe owner Steve Cohen doesn’t care right now and is going to spend whatever it takes to make the Mets contenders again after a few years of falling short and generating the wrong kind of headlines. He has the money to do so, and I’d rather see it go to players than have owners cry penury. But handing what is probably 15-20 percent of a team’s payroll to a 37-year-old starter could go south in a lot of ways, and when it does, will there be the resources to replace him?
The Mariners, meanwhile, gave five years to a pitcher who had a 7.84 ERA for the Diamondbacks just a year ago. That’s a little unfair, as Robbie Ray won the Cy Young Award and was the AL leader in rWAR in 2021, but there’s something remarkable about a pitcher who was walking a guy an inning as recently as August 2020 getting five years guaranteed — three years plus a player option for the last two — and $110 million.
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The good news is that the Mariners are now spending to bring in help for their young core just as those players are arriving in the majors. Jarred Kelenic is there, Julio Rodríguez and their stable of starting pitching prospects (George Kirby, Matt Brash, Emerson Hancock) are all likely to see the majors in 2022, and there’s more behind them. Ray gives them a nominal ace, and makes them more competitive immediately, which in their case probably helps stave off some regression to the mean after a year when they won 90 games despite being outscored by 51 runs on the season. They were in the playoff race until the final day, but that wasn’t likely to happen again without a significant infusion of talent from outside the organization — even if Kelenic has a breakout year, and one or more of those pitchers arrives and has a strong rookie season. The Mariners are still in search of production at first, DH, and for now one outfield corner, and if they’re willing to spend for Ray, they should spend to fill one more of those spots as well.
Ray transformed himself as a pitcher last offseason, and there are tangible reasons to believe this is who he’ll be going forward — at least on some level, as he’s probably not going to be Cy Young good every year. His FIP last season was 3.69, and if he provides 32 starts a year of that, the Mariners should be pleased, even if it’s not up to the level of his 2021 performance; it would still provide them with bulk innings, and covers them for some of the risk of attrition of their big four pitching prospects, including Logan Gilbert in that group. The best-case scenario for the Mariners is that all four of those guys stay healthy, and Ray is good enough to opt out after the third year, before his age-33 season. This deal was a surprise, but good for the Mariners for spending out in front of a youth movement, so that the team will be that much closer to contention when the rest of the kids show up in Seattle.
All of these moves leave Marcus Stroman as the one top-shelf starter still out there, and plenty of teams still need of someone of his caliber. With no high-end starters available in trades right now, he should be in the catbird seat, and aiming for no less than what Ray and Kevin Gausman got — maybe the same AAV with an extra guaranteed year, although with his durability, he may opt for the higher AAV on the shorter deal.
(Photo of Ray: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
