Rangers' Updated Rotation, Payroll After Max Scherzer's Reported Trade from Mets

The Texas Rangers just pulled off the biggest move of the MLB trade deadline season by adding New York Mets starting pitcher Max Scherzer on Saturday evening.

ESPN's Jeff Passan provided the details:

Here's a look at how the starting rotation and the team's payroll looks now that Scherzer is under contract with Texas through 2024.

Starting Rotation

The Rangers' starting rotation currently consists of Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, Andrew Heaney and Martín Pérez after staff ace Jacob deGrom was lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery.

Eovaldi is the current staff ace, and he still may hold down that role even with Scherzer aboard. The All-Star has gone 11-3 with a 2.69 ERA and a team-high 111 strikeouts.

On paper, the 39-year-old Scherzer may be best served as the No. 2 starter. He's had a down year in 2023 compared to his previous standards, but he's still posted an above-average season with a 4.01 ERA, 1.19 WHIP and 121 strikeouts in 107.2 innings over 19 starts.

Jon Gray (3.66 ERA, 4.39 FIP) and Dane Dunning (3.28 ERA, 4.26 FIP) should round out the top four thanks to their solid years.

That would leave Pérez and Heaney as the replacement candidates.

It's unclear who would be moved out of the rotation, but Pérez is having the worst year of the five with a 4.91 ERA, 5.38 FIP and 1.49 WHIP. His 6.0 K/9 rate is also second-lowest among Ranger starters.

Heaney would presumably be the other potential replacement candidate, though he's fared better than Pérez with a 4.62 ERA, 5.20 FIP and 1.35 WHIP. He's also struck out more than one batter per inning (103 K in 101.1 frames).

Payroll

Cot's Contracts listed the Rangers with a projected 40-man competitive balance tax payroll of $219,786,157 in 2023 prior to the Scherzer move.

As Passan noted, the Rangers will cover $22.5 million of the remaining money in Scherzer's contract, while the Mets are on the hook for $35 million plus.

It's unclear how the money breakdown will look for 2023 and 2024 specifically, although Spotrac posited that the Mets will pay the money owed for the rest of this season.

That means the Rangers would be due to pay $22.5 million to Scherzer in 2024. At the moment, the Rangers have $158,917,000 committed to the 2024 40-man competitive balance tax payroll, so adding Scherzer's $22.5 million to the mix makes that figure $181,417,000.

However, that number is bound to rise. Eight players on the 2023 roster are impending free agents, and a host of others are arbitration-eligible without a current contract figure for 2024, so the Rangers need to make more moves to round out next year's team.

For now, though, Scherzer is aboard for 2023 as the Rangers look to hold off the Houston Astros for the AL West en route to searching for their first-ever World Series title.