ESPN: The Yankees Sign $130 million Future Hall of Fame Ex-Mets Ace Free Agent.
In only 15 days, teams will begin Spring Training camps, marking the end of the 2024–2025 Major League Baseball winter. Only a small percentage of the dozens of free agents who began the offseason searching for new teams and contracts are still unsigned. That covers the majority of the well-known pitchers. Arizona Diamonbacks signed Corbin Burnes. The New York Yankees now own Max Fried. Roki Sasaki joined the Los Angeles Dodgers. And so forth.
With one probable exception, though, none of the free agent pitchers that were available this offseason have had a greater career than Max Scherzer. However, a string of ailments limited the surefire Hall of Famer, who is now 40, to only 43 1/3 innings during his first full season with the Texas Rangers. Throughout his 17-year career, including his 2008 rookie season with Arizona, in which he threw 56 innings, and even the shortened 2020 COVID season, in which he recorded 67 1/3 innings, Scherzer’s workload was the lowest.
With the exception of Justin Verlander, a former teammate of Scherzer’s from the Detroit Tigers, who is currently the only active pitcher with a career comparable to Scherzer’s 2,878 innings, Scherzer has more innings than any pitcher whose career started after 2000. This offseason, Verlander was also a free agent and inked a contract with the San Francisco Giants.
Scherzer: ‘Still Believe I Can Pitch at a High Level’
Scherzer maintains that he can return to the mound in 2025 and go back to his former self — and the New York Yankees may agree.
“I still believe I can pitch at a high level here. Late last season, when nerve problems and his continued recuperation from back surgery prevented him from spending time on the mound earlier in the season, Scherzer declared, “There’s nothing stopping me from doing that.” His season was cut short when he returned to the disabled list due to a hamstring injury.
Scherzer has been training at Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where the facility hosted a “pro day” earlier this week. During the event, Scherzer threw a bullpen session with scouts from the Yankees and a few other teams present to evaluate his readiness to return to the major leagues, and the scouts “liked what they saw,” according to Mets beat reporter Pat Ragazzo of SI.com. In addition to the Yankees, Mets, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays, Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves, and Chicago Cubs were present to watch the Scherzer mound session, Ragazzo reported.
Scherzer is probably going to look for an 8-figure deal.
What is the price of Scherzer? The 37-year-old righty signed a three-year, $130 million contract with the Mets prior to the 2022 campaign. The Mets agreed to pay roughly $31 million of Scherzer’s $43.3 million salary for 2024 after deciding to reduce payroll in the middle of 2023 and dealing him to the Texas Rangers.
It is obvious that neither the Yankees nor anybody else will give Scherzer anything close to $30 million. Verlander’s one-year, $15 million deal with the Giants serves as a standard, but given Scherzer’s recent history of injuries, a one-year contract in the low eight figures seems likely.
