TORONTO – At first glance, the addition of Max Scherzer to the Blue Jays’ pitching staff looks like a nice bonus, as the 40-year-old future Hall of Famer joins a rotation that already has five credible starters.
Yet the closer you look at Toronto’s decision to add Scherzer, the more his addition on a one-year, $15.5 million deal without deferrals looks like a necessary step rather than a welcome extra.
While Scherzer’s presence may end up bumping Yariel Rodriguez to the bullpen, there’s no guarantee that happens as injuries often pop up during spring training. And even if the entire staff is healthy when the season begins in late March, there’s still real value in having an extra starter ready.
That would be true anywhere, but that’s especially true on a Blue Jays team with more than its share of older starters. While Rodriguez will pitch at age 28 this year and Bowden Francis will pitch at 29, the rest of the projected rotation is considerably older with Jose Berrios (31), Kevin Gausman (34) and Chris Bassitt (36) all in the 30-plus range.
None of those starters are about to go to manager John Schneider and ask for extra rest – remember, it was just a couple years ago that this same group volunteered to go to a four-man rotation with reliever Trevor Richards filling in some gaps. And last year, long after the Blue Jays’ games stopped meaning anything in the standings, Bassitt pushed to start the final game of the season instead of asking the bullpen to cover those innings, reasoning “it’s not fair to them.”
They’re more than willing to take the ball, but regardless of those good intentions, flexibility is still valuable. Before adding Scherzer, the Blue Jays didn’t have enough of it – they were just one injury away from having to rely on bullpen games or rush a prospect.
Now, there’s one added layer of insurance that could be useful early. For instance: the Blue Jays play 13 games in a row this April, a stretch that starts with 10 on the road in New York, Boston and Baltimore. Mixing in Rodriguez for a start during that stretch makes lots of sense, even before you consider the possibility of scheduling chaos that might ensue from rainouts or suspended games at that time of year.
With all of this in mind, Rodriguez will almost certainly be stretched out as a starter this spring even if the team’s likely to employ a traditional five-man rotation that keeps the likes of Berrios, Gausman and Bassitt on regular turns.
Without a starting pitcher, the Blue Jays’ off-season wouldn’t have felt complete (and further pitching would of course help). As soon as the winter began, club executives identified rotation help as an area that could have the greatest overall impact on the team’s 2025 win total, reasoning that the staff as a whole would be better with Rodriguez in a swing role – a shift he’s open to, according to those who have heard from him directly.
After pursuits of Corbin Burnes and Roki Sasaki, the Blue Jays turned their focus to Scherzer by mid-January. Intent on joining a contender, Scherzer is believed to have indicated to Toronto that he’d be more interested in signing if it added to its offence.
Then, less than two weeks after they signed Anthony Santander, Scherzer was a Blue Jay, signed to a deal that pays him exactly $500,000 more than two other starters in the 40-plus demographic, Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton. The deal was negotiated by Scott Boras, the agent who also represents Blue Jays targets Burnes and Juan Soto.
Health-wise, there are real questions with Scherzer, who has been limited to just nine starts in 2024 due to back, shoulder and hamstring issues. A recent bullpen session in front of interested scouts evidently persuaded the Jays that he’s healthy enough to contribute more than the 43.1 innings he offered last year on his way to a 3.95 ERA.
If Scherzer can offer something like 100-125 innings in 2025, this deal can be a win for Toronto, who certainly don’t need the three-time Cy Young winner to reach his peak form to get its money’s worth. If he tops out at nine starts and 43.1 innings again, this deal will go down as a mistake.
With an average fastball of 92.6 m.p.h., Scherzer’s velocity is down from his career peak of 95 m.p.h., but if any right-handed starters can get by with guile rather than power it’s probably Scherzer and Bassitt, who first played together on the Mets. And speaking of that duo, the 2025 Blue Jays certainly won’t be lacking for mound presence and intensity, attributes that may help other pitchers on the staff as the year unfolds.
Even so, adding Scherzer to an already older staff seems somewhat counterintuitive given the risk of injury. Signing 40-year-old future Hall of Famers doesn’t always end up well, as Joey Votto and the 2024 Blue Jays can tell you.
But with the possible exception of Scherzer himself, no one’s expecting him to pitch 200 innings again, and this Blue Jays pitching staff is deeper with him on it. Even at 40, he throws harder than fellow free agent starters including Sean Manaea, Jose Quintana, and Andrew Heaney with a better strikeout-minus-walk rate than the likes of Manaea, Quintana, Verlander, Morton, Max Fried and Frankie Montas.
Best case scenario, Scherzer’s starting playoff games for the Blue Jays this October. Worst case, he’s injured again, or the team struggles and he’s trade bait in July. More realistically, Scherzer at least provides a bridge to the second half of the season when the likes of Jake Bloss (prospect), Alek Manoah (elbow surgery), Trey Yesavage (prospect) and trade acquisitions could offer the pitching staff a second wind.
The range of outcomes here is wide, making it as fascinating a signing as it was a necessary one.
from Sportsnet.ca
via i9bet
No comments:
Post a Comment