Does Max Scherzer Have the Right Suitors to Incite a Bidding War?
What is Max Scherzer worth? It's a tricky question, but let's try to unpack it.
First, here's what Scherzer and his agent, the notorious Scott Boras, want: a $200 million deal, which, as FoxSports.com's Jon Morosi notes, would make him the first pitcher in baseball history not named Clayton Kershaw to crack that rarefied threshold.
Scherzer isn't Kershaw (who is?), but he's easily the best hurler on the market. The 30-year-old right-hander has been a strikeout machine, averaging more than 10 punchouts per nine innings in each of the last three seasons.
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He won a Cy Young in 2013 and followed that up with an All-Star 2014 campaign, during which he tossed a career-high 220.1 innings and struck out a career-best 252.
| Player | IP (career) | ERA | SO | Contract |
| Clayton Kershaw | 1,378.1 | 2.48 | 1,445 | 7 yrs./$215 million |
| Justin Verlander | 1,978 | 3.53 | 1,830 | 7 yrs./$180 million |
| Max Scherzer | 1,239.1 | 3.58 | 1,321 | ? |
By any measure, Scherzer is an elite arm, a rotation-changing talent. The club that lands him will be instantly, markedly better.
But here's where that "worth" question gets tricky. In today's crazy MLB salary climate—when star players are being paid like never before, when a 25-year-old Giancarlo Stanton gets a deal that could earn him nearly double the gross domestic product of the Republic of Kiribati—Scherzer probably "deserves" to have his asking price met.
Will he? Not without multiple deep-pocketed bidders. And at the moment, that's seemingly not materializing.
Perhaps that's because Scherzer, recent results aside, doesn't own an extensive track record. In fact, he posted a 4.43 ERA and a pedestrian 1.3 WAR as recently as 2011.
Or maybe it's because next year's prospective free-agent pitching class is loaded with studs like David Price, Johnny Cueto and Jordan Zimmermann. Supply and demand, right?
Sure, but this isn't next winter, this is now. And there are a gaggle of teams with the need and resources to meet Scherzer's demands, at least in theory. Let's run through a few (potential) suitors and examine why they haven't inked Scherzer…yet.
New York Yankees
No discussion about a big-name free agent is complete without an obligatory Yankees mention. Certainly, New York could use another ace up its sleeve with Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia coming off injury-shortened seasons.
More to the point, the Bombers need a shot in the arm after missing the playoffs yet again. And they've always got near-bottomless pockets, provided they're in a spending mood.
Still, general manager Brian Cashman has shown uncharacteristic restraint so far. The Yankees have stayed away from the offseason's big fish, preferring instead to reel in second-tier incumbents like third baseman Chase Headley.
If the writing on the wall wasn't legible enough, here's what Cashman told NBC's Bruce Beck, per Anthony McCarron of the New York Daily News: "I think that’s a lot higher level than we’re willing to play in right now. I don’t think Yankee fans will be looking at Max Scherzer."
There's some semantic wiggle room in there. Right now, though, Scherzer in pinstripes seems like a stretch at best.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Think of the Dodgers as the Yankees of the West: swimming in cash and technically in on every pricey free agent.
Like New York, however, LA is stressing pragmatism under new president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
Friedman has quietly upgraded the rotation with the signings of Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson, but he has been hesitant to pull the trigger on the kind of eye-popping megadeals that briefly defined the Dodgers.
As Friedman told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times shortly after arriving in Southern California, it's best to "pay for what a player will do, not necessarily for what they have done."
That doesn't preclude the Dodgers signing Scherzer, who would join Kershaw in the $200 million club if Los Angeles inked him on his stated terms. But don't hold your smog-choked breath.
San Francisco Giants
It's been an eerily quiet offseason for the defending champs. They lost out on Pablo Sandoval, traded for Casey McGehee and re-signed starter Jake Peavey and reliever Sergio Romo.
Other than that…crickets.
Still, the Giants were in on Jon Lester, the premier non-Scherzer arm on the market, and they've been linked to James Shields, another top-shelf talent. So a Scherzer splash isn't completely out of the question.
Or maybe it is, per ESPN.com's Jim Bowden, who reports the San Francisco is out on Shields and was "never in on Scherzer."
It makes sense. With Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain (returning from season-ending surgery) and Tim Hudson in the fold, plus Peavy, Tim Lincecum and super-swingman Yusmeiro Petit, San Francisco doesn't need another starter.
And certainly not one as pricey as Scherzer.
Detroit Tigers
In March 2014, Detroit offered Scherzer what the club deemed "a substantial, long-term contract extension," per ESPN.com. Here's more from that report:
"An industry source told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark that the Tigers' offer to Scherzer was for a slightly lower figure than the $25.7 million per year that Justin Verlander received in the extension he signed last spring, but still would have placed Scherzer among the top six highest-paid pitchers in baseball by average annual value of the deal.
"
Scherzer rejected the offer, but it unequivocally indicated the Tigers' desire to keep him in the Motor City. Now, in the absence of a bidding war, the reunion seems increasingly plausible.
As MLB.com's Jason Beck notes, a late-winter Scherzer signing "could become the biggest January saga for the Tigers since 2012, when they went from waiting on Yoenis Cespedes to losing Victor Martinez for the season to signing Prince Fielder, all in about a week."
The point is, big deals can happen late, and the improbable can turn to reality in a heartbeat.
Bottom line: After a winter of waiting, we'll soon know how much Max Scherzer is worth—and who's willing to pay him.
All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted.
