Mega-contract bargain
Scherzer one of few outperforming big deal
We’re watching him pitch every five days, but we’re not paying close attention.
In an era when big-bucks contracts are perceived as albatrosses, turning last offseason into a living hell for most of baseball’s free agent class, there is Nationals ace Max Scherzer.
Scherzer, who starts Tuesday night against the Pirates, leads the brigade of active free agent signees who is outperforming his mega-contract.
This is a man who signed a record seven-year, $210 million contract in January 2015, and here we are nearing the halfway point of his deal, and he’s been worth every single penny.
Scherzer is one of 21 pitchers in baseball history who have signed contracts worth at least $100 million. If he continues performing close to his production through three years and one month of the deal, it could turn out to be a steal,
“I still have so many years here that I expect to pitch well in and the team expects me to pitch well in, because they’re paying me so well.”
Max Scherzer Nationals pitcher
even at $210 million.
“Yeah, but I still have to finish the contract out,” Scherzer tells USA TODAY. “I’m not even halfway through. I still have so many years here that I expect to pitch well in and the team expects me to pitch well in, because they’re paying me so well.”
Scherzer, 5-1 with a 1.62 ERA and a National League-leading 57 strikeouts, again is having a stellar season and will likely contend for his fourth Cy Young award. A win puts him alongside Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton and Greg Maddux as the only pitchers to achieve the feat. He is 55-27 with a 2.70 ERA since joining the Nationals, pitching more innings than anyone else in baseball, winning two Cy Youngs with a fifth-place finish, two top-10 MVP finishes and three All-Star Game appearances.
“If you go out there and try to prove your contract or your worth,” Scherzer says, “your head is in the wrong spot. I try to avoid falling down the trap of living up to my contract or proving I’m worth it. Good or bad, I can’t go down that path.”
A recent roundtable discussion with baseball executives and scouts led to a simple conclusion: Scherzer has performed the best among active players who signed long-term, free agent contracts and switched teams.
Sure, others are in the conversation. Four years into his six-year, $155 million contract, Jon Lester is 45-26 with a 3.33 ERA and helped lift the Cubs to the 2016 World Series title in his second season there. All-Star third baseman Adrian Beltre of the Rangers paved his way to Cooperstown with his five-year, $80 million deal in 2011, earning an AllStar nod or top 10 MVP finish every season.
Yet no one might quite stand up to Scherzer, who has made at least 30 starts and pitched 200 innings in each season since joining the Nationals and remains one of the top three pitchers in all of baseball.
Scherzer’s body of work in his deal won’t be fully evaluated until his contract expires, but if he continues like this, he’ll at least be in the debate among the greatest long-term, free agent contracts, joining the likes of Barry Bonds with the Giants, Greg Maddux with the Braves and Randy Johnson with the Diamondbacks.
“Right now,” Nationals GM Mike Rizzo says, “I think you’ve got to go with Johnson. It’s hard to do any better that that, right?”
Johnson signed a four-year, $52 million free agent contract on Dec. 1, 1998, with the Diamondbacks. In those four years, he won four Cy Young awards, earned three ERA titles, went 81-27 and led the Diamondbacks to their lone World Series title, going 3-0 with a 1.04 ERA against the Yankees.
“It was a risky move signing a guy like that coming off back surgery,” says Rizzo, who was the Diamondbacks’ scouting director. “But in deals like that, you don’t sign the player, you sign the person. That’s why we signed Max. You know it’s hard giving out that kind of money, but I felt good about it because I drafted him (with Arizona), and knew him so well as a person.”
Maddux, coming off a Cy Young season with the Cubs, took $8 million less to sign with Atlanta than the Yankees when he signed his five-year, $28 million contract in 1992. Maddux promptly won three consecutive Cy Young awards with a runner-up and fifth-place finish, led the league in ERA three times, led Atlanta to the postseason every year and won the 1995 World Series.
And Bonds, who signed a six-yearyear, $43.75 million contract in December 1992, merely transformed an entire organization, keeping the Giants in San Francisco when they nearly relocated to St. Petersburg and is as responsible as anyone for AT&T Park being built.
Bonds hit 235 home runs and drove in 600 runs in those first six seasons, winning an MVP with four top-five finishes, leading the league in walks four times and producing at least a 1.000 OPS (onbase plus slugging percentage) each season. He stayed in San Francisco for the duration of his career, became baseball’s all-time home run king at 762 and will have his No. 25 retired in August.
If Scherzer, who turns 33 in July, keeps going like this, it couldn’t hurt the free agent prospects of Clayton Kershaw, David Price and Patrick Corbin this winter.
Then again, maybe executives will see it as nothing more than an aberration.
Still, when you see a guy the likes of Scherzer getting better with age, teams can’t help but take notice, knowing that in this golden age of revenue, there still can be some nine-figure bargains out there.
“All I know is that we’re thrilled,” Rizzo says. “We would do it all over again. Believe me, in a heartbeat.”