Somewhere in a quiet corner of AT&T Park, San Francisco Giants general manager Brian Sabean pushes the record button on an R-2 unit and says, "Help us, Max Scherzer. You're our only hope."
A likely scenario? Not exactly, no. But plausible. At least to the extent that Scherzer is still available, and that he does look like the Giants' only hope.
As strange as it feels to place the Giants in a dire situation mere weeks after winning their third World Series in five years, well, that's the kind of offseason it's been.
They've already lost Pablo Sandoval and Michael Morse from their lineup, and their rotation is missing Jake Peavy and Ryan Vogelsong. For a team that only won 88 games in the regular season, that's a lot of missing talent.
The good news is that the rest of the National League West hasn't left the Giants in the dust. The bad news is that it hasn't done them any favors, either.
In Los Angeles, the Dodgers have gone from really good to a different kind of really good. In San Diego, the pitching-rich Padres have new bats in Matt Kemp, Wil Myers and Derek Norris.
FanGraphs' projections for 2015 presently have the Giants in between these two clubs, but there's an argument that they're below both the Dodgers and Padres in the NL West totem pole.
All it would take for the Giants to fix that is a nice, big splash. Ergo, Scherzer.
You know him mainly as the 2013 American League Cy Young winner, but his most recent effort saw him post a 3.15 ERA and 4.00 K/BB ratio across 220.1 innings in 2014. By FanGraphs WAR, he was the seventh-best starter in baseball. Over the last two years, only Clayton Kershaw has been better.
Of course, you may also know Scherzer as a guy the Giants were interested in not that long ago.
After the Giants watched Sandoval sign with the Boston Red Sox in November, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com reported they had a slate of Plan Bs that included Scherzer and Jon Lester. They're obviously not the same thing as Sandoval, but Sabean made it clear the team was perfectly willing to replace Sandoval's bat and glove with an impact arm.
As he told John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle:
We don’t have the next wave of pitchers coming like the ones we produced who have been so important to us. You need other guys side by side with a [Madison] Bumgarner just to keep up with the Joneses, whether it’s in the division or league. You have to have a pretty good damn solid three and fill it out from there, not just this coming year but going into the future.
After the Giants missed out on Lester, logic suggested that Scherzer would find his way into their crosshairs.
Apparently not, according to Shea:
This could be a bluff. Or, it could be a reaction to Scherzer's sudden demand for a $200 million contract, as Jon Morosi of FoxSports.com reported. Tack on a lost draft pick after his rejection of his qualifying offer, and you're looking at quite the price tag.
If the Giants are just bluffing, great. If they're scared off by Scherzer's asking price, they shouldn't be. They're one of the few teams in the league that can afford it, and chances are he would be worth it.
As much as the Giants give off an aura of a scrappy underdog, they're most definitely a big-market team with a big-market payroll.
Per Cot's Baseball Contracts, the Giants have escalated their payroll every year since 2008, and in a big way. In going from $76.6 million that year to $149.1 million in 2014, the club's payroll has risen by an average of $12 million every year.
Knowing this, a $160 million payroll in 2015 would seem possible, especially after winning the World Series. That's a lot of extra revenue, you know.
As of now, the Giants have about $130 million committed to 2015, with MLB Trade Rumors projecting another $12.8 million in arbitration payouts. But come this time next year, the departures of Tim Lincecum and Tim Hudson alone will create $30 million in payroll space.
The point: Scherzer's hardly a financial no-go for the Giants. A $200 million contract over, say, seven years would cost $28.5 million a year, but the Giants could have him work for cheap in 2015 before the real payments begin.
The long term, naturally, would be a gamble. In the short term, however, the Giants would be getting a legit ace to help them carry on as World Series contenders.
According to FanGraphs, the Steamer projection for Scherzer's 2015 season calls for a 3.02 ERA and a 3.9 WAR. That's not so great compared to the 6.0 WAR he's averaged over the last two seasons, but it's the seventh-highest WAR among Steamer's starting pitcher projections.
Also, bear in mind that Steamer isn't thinking of Scherzer as a guy who pitches regularly at AT&T Park. It's up to you and I to imagine how good he could be there, and boy could he be good.
Scherzer's abilities as a strikeout pitcher obviously play well at any ballpark, but his batted-ball profile would definitely, ahem, fly in San Francisco. He's been one of the fly-balliest pitchers in baseball over the last two seasons, and fly balls don't die anywhere quite like they do at AT&T Park.
It's not just the huge dimensions. It's the marine layer, too. These two things have kept a lot of balls in the yard in recent seasons. Per ESPN.com's park factors, AT&T Park has been the least-friendly park to home run hitters in three of four years.
Scherzer's ERA over the last two seasons with the Detroit Tigers is 3.02. If he trades American League lineups for National League lineups and Comerica Park for AT&T Park, he could consistently do maybe half a run better than that with the Giants as long as he remains in his prime.
Of course, Scherzer won't be in his prime forever.
He's 30 years old, and his fastball velocity in 2014 was the worst of his career at an average of 92.8 mph. There's also no point in ignoring that Scherzer comes with some injury risk, as he's:
- A pitcher.
- A pitcher with over 1,200 big league innings on his arm.
- A pitcher who doesn't have a low-effort delivery.
But while these concerns certainly exist, Scherzer's not necessarily doomed.
He'll have more adjustments to make once his fastball velocity is no longer above average, but the fact that he's steadily decreased his reliance (see Brooks Baseball) on his fastball as he's gained more experience is a pretty good head start.
And as Jeff Zimmerman argued at MLB Trade Rumors, Scherzer is less of an injury risk than fellow Hot Stove aces Lester and James Shields:
"These three pitchers each have health (no recent DL stints) and a history of being able to make about 33 starts per season on their side. The only difference among them is age, which makes Scherzer the least likely to end up on the DL."
This is not to say that spending $200 million on Scherzer would be an entirely safe gamble by the Giants. That's a lot of money going to a 30-year-old pitcher. There would be risk. Plenty of it.
But right now, Scherzer is quite healthy and quite good. Later, there's a solid chance he could remain quite healthy and quite good. And remember, AT&T Park isn't going anywhere.
Lastly, beyond the reality that the Giants can afford Scherzer and the reality that he could be worth their while, is another reason to sign him: It's not like the Giants clearly have better options.
Relative to other clubs, the Giants don't have a surplus of young talent to use in trades. So as much as a Justin Upton or a Cole Hamels would help, San Francisco may be barred from acquiring players like that.
Meanwhile on the free-agent market, all the good bats are gone, and the only arm comparable to Scherzer is Shields. He'd cost maybe half as much as Scherzer, but he is almost 33, is past his peak and could well be past his peak as a pitcher overall.
And so, it's Scherzer or bust. He's a guy the Giants can get, and he's the guy they need to get.
Unless, you know, their plan at this point is to just wait until the next even year. That also seems to work.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.
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