Max Scherzer pitched another gem on Wednesday night. The 33-year-old Washington Nationals ace mowed down the Baltimore Orioles, allowing two hits while striking out 12 over eight shutout innings, leading Washington to a 2-0 win and a road sweep. A dominant performance for sure, but also one of many he has turned in this season.
“Whenever he goes out here that fifth day, he’s always competitive and one of the best pitchers in baseball,” Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper said. “Can’t say enough about him.”
Harper, hold my (theoretical) beer.
Entering Thursday night’s action, Scherzer is 9-1 with a 1.92 ERA. He ranks first in the majors for wins, starts and strikeouts and is off to his best start in 2018 than in either of the past two seasons, both of which ended with him winning the NL Cy Young Award.
| Max Scherzer’s first 12 starts | IP | W | L | ERA | K per 9 IP | BB per 9 IP |
| 2016 | 81.1 | 6 | 4 | 3.87 | 11.2 | 2.7 |
| 2017 | 84.1 | 7 | 3 | 2.35 | 12.2 | 2.1 |
| 2018 | 79.2 | 9 | 1 | 1.92 | 13.6 | 2.2 |
That three-year stretch has been so good it is safe to say Scherzer is the best pitcher in Major League Baseball, and yes, that includes ranking him ahead of Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, the previous holder of the mantle.
Consider this: According to wins above replacement, an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic, Scherzer has been more valuable than Kershaw in each of the past two years. And that passing of the torch is a combination of Kershaw declining and Scherzer getting better each year he has been a member of the Nationals.
Injuries explain part of Kershaw’s decline, he missed parts of 2016 and 2017 with back issues, but Scherzer is also on another level with his pitches, particularly when throwing his fastball and slider.
According to data from TruMedia, Scherzer averages 92.7 mph with his fastball and when he throws it at the upper third of the plate, opposing batters swing and miss a career-high 39 percent of the time. Overall, hitters are putting the pitch in play less than a quarter of the time it is thrown (24 percent), making it very difficult for batters to get good wood on the ball.
His slider, used almost exclusively against right-handed batters, is thrown in the strike zone 57 percent of the time yet is a called strike half the time. In other words, it’s a pitch that is completely baffling hitters this season.
His change-up is equally effective. Scherzer is holding opponents to a .157 average against with 25 strikeouts in 51 at-bats ending on the pitch in 2018. And that’s perhaps even more impressive than it sounds considering he throws it in the heart of the strike zone more than a third of the time.
As far as the end-of-season awards, Scherzer should win the NL Cy Young vote in a landslide. According to Tom Tango’s simple Cy Young Tracker, which projects how the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will vote for the Cy Young Award, Scherzer figures to end 2018 with 96.7 points, a whopping 23-point lead over Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets, who would be second, and a 37.8-point lead over Kershaw, who is estimated to rank seventh.
It’s also worth noting that Scherzer’s 96.7 projected Tango points are more than Corey Kluber of the Cleveland Indians (89.8), currently considered the best pitcher in the AL.
And it is isn’t out of place to put Scherzer in the NL MVP conversation, either. His 3.6 wins above replacement leads all pitchers and hitters in the NL and his end-of-season fWAR projection of 7.4 would only be a few ticks shy of Kershaw’s mark in 2014 (7.6) when he was named the league’s most valuable player.
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