Why Max Scherzer Is Being Underpaid in $210 Million Free-Agent Megadeal

Max Scherzer deserves a raise. 

It's not often such a thing can be said about a player in Scherzer's position. For one thing, his seven-year, $210 million deal with the Washington Nationals is still one of only 16 $200 million pacts throughout Major League Baseball history.

For another, the story of those 16 deals is largely one of disappointment. Bad memories of Alex Rodriguez and Prince Fielder still linger. Meanwhile, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Robinson Cano are still generating them.

But Scherzer? Nah. He's already given the Nationals more than they bargained for since they signed him in January 2015, and there's zero indication he'll soon stop doing so. 

The 34-year-old right-hander was plenty good in his first four seasons with the Nationals. He averaged a 2.71 ERA and 282 strikeouts per year while picking up National League Cy Young Awards in 2016 and 2017. He finished second in the voting in 2018.

Yet all this now seems like a mere warm-up for 2019. Though his first 19 starts, Scherzer has racked up a 2.30 ERA and MLB-best totals in innings (129.1) and strikeouts (181). The latter puts him on pace for a final tally of 333 strikeouts. No pitcher has gone there since Randy Johnson in 2002.

One need not look earlier in the 2019 season to find Scherzer's best work. It's happening right now. In nine starts since May 22, he's accumulated a 0.84 ERA and whiffed 94 batters in only 64 innings.

Scherzer is also growing his legend in other ways. He suffered a broken nose on June 18, only to toss seven shutout innings with 10 strikeouts against the Philadelphia Phillies the next day. More recently, he returned from paternity leave to whiff 11 over seven more shutout innings against the Kansas City Royals on Saturday. For good measure, he even stole a base.

"I played in Atlanta, and those guys they had were pretty good," Nationals manager Dave Martinez said in reference to the Braves' famed trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, per Jamal Collier of MLB.com. "But what I've seen out of Max is incredible, it really is. No runs? I don't know how many games now where he keeps getting better and better as we go along."

An obligatory disclaimer is that Scherzer isn't invincible. He won't stay this hot forever. And especially at his age, the threat of a sudden and serious arm or shoulder injury is very real.

Yet even if Scherzer never makes another start for the Nationals, they will have already gotten their money's worth out of him.

The Nats essentially challenged Scherzer to prove he deserved a contract worthy of the $215 million deal that Clayton Kershaw had signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers a year earlier. He's done that. He leads not only Kershaw, but also all his pitching peers in wins above replacement since 2015, according to both Baseball Reference (34.6 WAR) and FanGraphs (31.2 WAR).

Objectively quantifying Scherzer's value isn't as simple, but FanGraphs' WAR valuation system puts his worth as a National at $250 million. Switch their preferred version of WAR (based on fielding independent pitching) for RA-9 WAR (based on runs allowed), and it's more like $272 million.

And while the aforementioned disclaimer is certainly necessary, it's also worth taking with a grain of salt.

After all, Scherzer is currently as durable and prolific at eating innings as he's ever been. When combined with the general decline of these qualities among his fellow starting pitchers, what emerges is an ongoing rise in his share of all innings pitched by starters since his first full season in 2009:

Scherzer is also becoming more dominant, as his upward-trending strikeout rate is currently complemented by declines in his walk and home run rates.

This has something to do with how his fastball is defying any kind of normal aging curve. Its average velocity sits at a career-best 95.0 mph, and it's maintaining an elite average spin rate of 2,490 revolutions per minute.

Yet Scherzer's increasing dominance is more so a window into his utter unwillingness to stop working. He came up as a three-pitch guy with a fastball, slider and changeup. He's since expanded his arsenal to five pitches by adding a curveball in 2013 and a cutter last season.

Scherzer is taking full advantage of his deep arsenal this year by only featuring his fastball a career-low 48.1 percent of the time. His swinging-strike percentage has benefited accordingly, and Rob Friedman can demonstrate just how many of those whiffs are of the feeble variety:

In addition to what he throws, Scherzer has also adjusted how he pitches.

Many pitchers have only recently come around to the high fastball as a means to combat the launch-angle revolution. Scherzer, however, was an early adopter of the practice. He's been pitching up in the strike zone with his heater since 2015.

As Scherzer explained to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, making that adjustment was a simple matter of using his ears:

"It's everything. I don't think you can peg it down to one point. All I know is that the low fastball is getting crushed. That's why I love being in the NL. Because you're in the batting cages and you see the hitting coaches working with the guys and what they're trying to do with the baseball and how they craft their swings and you start hearing their lingo and you start understanding what they're trying to do with the bat and the way they want to hit the ball in different spots. It all makes sense what's going on on the field."

Scherzer's adoption of the high fastball has worked especially well in the last two seasons, which contain the two lowest slugging percentages against his heater.

It's his other pitches, meanwhile, that are facilitating his sudden transformation into a ground-ball pitcher. Taken together, those two things explain how he's avoided being burned by the most homer-happy season in baseball history.

The elephant in the room is Scherzer's lackluster postseason track record as a National. He didn't dominate in any of the three October starts he made between 2016 and 2017, and he let Game 5 of the 2017 National League Division Series get away when he pitched in relief.

However, to dwell on this is to neglect the fundamental truth that Scherzer's tenure with the Nationals has been an astounding success. They effectively paid for the best pitcher in baseball, and the best pitcher in baseball is what they've received.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball.