Image credit: Chris Simon
As the long (and prosperous, for the New York Mets) holiday weekend was wrapping up, negotiations between the Mets and future Hall of Fame right-hander Max Scherzer were reportedly picking up in earnest.
Yes, you read that correctly. By Sunday night, every Mets fan with access to Twitter was refreshing their feed in 10-second intervals hoping for confirmation of a deal.
As of Monday morning at 7 AM EST, the best they got was via Jon Morosi of MLB Network.
Scherzer and Jacob deGrom together atop a starting rotation is stuff that only happens in fantasy baseball or at the All-Star Game. Per some pretty solid reports from the big dogs of the industry, the Mets are reasonably close to making that dream a reality.
Unreal. In the truest sense of the word. And it won’t be cheap, as noted by Morosi above and originally noted by Andy Martino of SNY. But, man, would it be worth every cent.
It’s not often you can say that about a guy making $40 million-plus per season. In this case, however…
Scherzer, 37, has been among the cream of Major League Baseball’s crop of starters for close to a decade. And judging by the 2.46 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, 236 strikeout campaign he put up in 2021 (third-place finish in NL Cy Young Award voting), he doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
Since making his MLB debut with Arizona in 2008, Scherzer’s 65.8 wins above replacement trail only Clayton Kershaw for most in MLB among qualified starters.
From 2013 — his first All-Star selection — through this past season, Mad max tops that list with 51.2 fWAR (Kershaw, 46.1; deGrom, 38.9).
Since 2018, when deGrom kicked into his own elite gear, the only guys who even come close to Jake’s level of production (1.94 ERA, 23.5 fWAR) are Scherzer (2.74 ERA, 21.1 fWAR) and Gerrit Cole (2.85 ERA, 20.1 fWAR).
And now the Mets could head into the lockout with two of them in their mitts.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. We as Mets fans have been down this road before. Steven Matz used the Mets for leverage last week. The criminal the Mets almost signed last winter did the same and made a public spectacle out of it.
Cautious optimism will be the name of the game until this thing is official. But yeah, these are some uniquely exciting times. LFGM.
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