With Jon Lester now off of the market, right-hander and 2013 American League Cy Young winner Max Scherzer is now the talk of baseball’s free agency.
According to his agent, Max Scherzer is a “Peyton Manning, No. 1 kind of guy.” His agent, for the record, is none other than Scott Boras.
If that’s the case, then teams should be flocking to acquire his services for 2015 and beyond.
Nobody can blame them either. Throughout the past two years, Scherzer posted the top two seasons of his career, going 18-5 with a 3.15 ERA in 33 starts last season and 21-3 with a 2.90 ERA in 2013, earning him his first career American League Cy Young Award.
Yet, he’s still available.
But with Jon Lester finally off of the market heading to the north side of Chicago, let alone setting the market for starting pitchers, the pitching focus shifts to Scherzer and where he will go and for how much?
“You tell all the teams and everyone involved that he can sign at any time. He’s open to signing at any time,” Boras mentioned. “If we can get in a room and we carry out a negotiation and he’s pleased with it, it can be done without notice at any time.”
Remember, this isn’t a question of if he’ll get signed, but who and where.
For starters (no pun intended) it’s unlikely going to be Detroit. The Tigers offered Scherzer a seven-year, $160 million contract last spring that he turned down. The deal would have included his final year of arbitration, which was worth around $15.5 million.
It’s somewhat unlikely that since Lester signed for $155 million, that Scherzer will get anything over that, however considering the work of Scott Boras, anything is possible.
The New York Yankees are rumored to go hard after Scherzer which would not come as a surprise to anyone. They’re in need of one more top quality starter to bolster that rotation and he would give the Yankees the one-two punch the Bronx would love between Masahiro Tanaka and Scherzer, followed by CC Sabathia as the No. 3 starter. However, it’s Sabathia’s contract that serves as a harsh reminder that giving a big contract to a pitcher in his 30’s may not be the best idea.
Boras, for that matter, believes that Scherzer would give the Yanks a starting rotation capable of winning a World Series.
“I can’t predict what the Yankees are going to do,” he said during the Winter Meetings. “But a guy like Max fits with their starting rotation to develop a World Series caliber set, similar to what they had in the past.”
The idea of the Yankees spending big money on pitching isn’t too farfetched even with the Sabathia deal stabbing them in the gut. They gave the left-handed reliever a four-year deal worth $36 million after he posted a career-best 2.02 ERA in 2014, going 5-5 in 73 games between the Red Sox and the Orioles.
This is a team that, no matter how you spin it, needs a top quality starter. Only Hiroki Kuroda and Tanaka posted more than 10 wins each for the Yankees last year and Brandon McCarthy won was the only other qualified starter to win more than five games.
Boras biggest sales point to the Yankees is that the best Yankees teams – the ones that won four World Series in five years in the late 1990’s, dominated the American League East in the 2000’s and won one more title in 2009 – had at least three top-end starters capable of combining for 50 wins and 600 innings.
“You can find when (Roger) Clemens as the No.1 or when (Mike) Mussina was the No. 1, (Andy) Pettite,” he said. “They won a lot of world championships with that formula.”
The Yankees top three starting pitchers to date is young ace Tanaka, followed by Michael Pineda and Sabathia who are both coming off of injury, along with Ivan Nova who is recovering from Tommy John surgery and won’t be available until June.
The Yankees were in contact with McCarthy, however with McCarthy heading to the Dodgers on a four-year $48 million deal, general manager Brian Cashman could be tempted to toss the Yankees into the sweepstakes for Scherzer.
The Yankees would also allow Kuroda to return to the rotation after another solid year on the mound, however at 39 years old, he hasn’t decided whether or not he’ll retire or return.
Should Scherzer decide to sign with the Yankees, their starting rotation could look something like: Scherzer, Tanaka, Sabathia, Pineda, Phelps until Nova returns. Overall, not a bad projected starting five.
The only question with the Yankees is, are they willing to risk a long-term, big money contract on a starting pitcher in his 30’s?