How Much Better Can Scherzer Get in the NL?

A future ace is often tough to identify. Sometimes it’s a #1 overall pick who makes his MLB debut a year after being drafted and turns in his first gem of a season in year three like David Price. But it is often a more circuitous route that maybe only involved a hint of potential ace-dom at the beginning, as with Max Scherzer.

The 11^th overall pick from 2006 blitzed his way through the minors and debuted in 2008 with time split in between the rotation and bullpen. Most saw him eventually landing in the bullpen, but as a high impact closer-type. He ranked in the 2008 top 100 lists for Baseball America (#66) and Baseball Prospectus (#90), but he wasn’t even the top prospect on his team. That distinction belonged to Jarrod Parker.

Scherzer hasn’t seen the bullpen since that 2008 season – save a couple of postseason appearances, including an amazing one for the Tigers in 2013 – and has evolved from a promising, but flawed mid-rotation arm to dominant frontline stud. Now, armed with the contract to back his ace status, Scherzer moves from one loaded pitching staff to another, but this time he will be the focal point. Many believe the move back to the National League will increase his value substantially, but how much can he improve upon his last seasons: one a Cy Young effort and the other a near-match when you look at his FIP and component numbers?

The obvious gain that many are looking for is in strikeouts, as a result of Scherzer now facing the pitcher probably somewhere in between one and two times per game. Only two pitchers had 30+ games of two or more plate appearances and only Madison Bumgarner had 20 games of three or more plate appearances, so the people saying “he’s going to face a pitcher three times a game” are wrong. It will happen sometimes, but he’s not logging 96 plate appearances (32 x 3) against pitchers. Aaron Harang led the league with 74 PA against pitchers last year with the top 90 percent of starters getting 60 PA against their counterparts.

Additionally, I’ve seen or heard the notion that he will add 30-40 strikeouts to his total thanks to facing pitchers. That isn’t very likely, either. In most years just a handful of pitchers will post a 50+ percent strikeout rate against opposing pitchers, though nobody achieved the feat in 2014 (Tom Koehler, 49.1%). Koehler’s teammate, Nathan Eovaldi, led the league with 32 pitcher strikeouts last season. In fact, 32 is usually the league-high in a given season:

Even if he reaches the heights of new teammate, Gio Gonzalez, he isn’t adding 41 strikeouts to his total. Scherzer still faces #9 hitters in the American League and while they aren’t as bad as pitchers, they aren’t exactly good. The league leader has averaged about 40 strikeouts of the #9 hitter over the last five years, which would net Scherzer +10 on his 2014 total… if he comes in and leads the league:

On average, National League starters get 16 strikeouts of pitchers over the last three seasons (the period during which strikeouts have taken a significant jump). I think we can safely project Scherzer to be above average. The top 75 percent of starters register 28 strikeouts against their counterparts on the mound. It may seem low to only put him in the top 75 percent, but the top 90 percent only jumps to 30, so let’s just call it 29.

Looking at #9 hitters as a whole for NL starters, those figures jump to 17, 30, and 32 for the average, top 75 percent, and top 90 percent. Even putting Scherzer in the top 90 percent adds just two strikeouts to his 2014 total. Meanwhile, the differential in SP strikeout rates between the leagues shrunk to a 10-year low of 0.20 percentage points each of the last two seasons after living around one percentage point for the previous eight seasons.

The strikeout rate has slid in each of the last two seasons since 2012’s peak of 29.4 percent, but if he only stays at last year’s 27.9 percent rate, he is still easily elite. I’m just not seeing where Scherzer gets a substantial strikeout gain with this move to Washington. He might just be better and return to his 2012 level, but there is nothing in his numbers or the AL-to-NL numbers that suggest we should be expecting any substantial bump.

Of course that doesn’t mean he won’t gain any advantage with his move to the NL. The Senior Circuit still holds a 0.22 ERA and 0.02 WHIP advantage for starters over the last decade, and those are up to 0.27 and 0.04 over the last three seasons. Scherzer’s transition into a frontline starter has come over the last three seasons. Even though his 2012 ERA was 3.74, he was still quite ace-like for five of the six months, as he shook off a rough April (7.77 ERA) and rallied for a 3.14 ERA in his final 27 starts.

So looking at his last three seasons as a whole, we see a 3.24 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 622.3 innings. Applying the NL discounts, he’d move to a 2.97 ERA and 1.09 WHIP, which would’ve slotted him 14^th in ERA and tied for seventh in WHIP last season. If you wanted to be more optimistic and say his 2013-14 is now his true talent level and then you apply the NL discounts to that, you’re looking at a 2.75 ERA and 1.03 WHIP (10^th and tied for 3^rd, respectively). Steamer projects him for 2.91/1.08 with a 0.6 percentage point gain, but in just 192 innings so actually a 19-strikeout drop in raw totals. The ERA and WHIP totals rank second in baseball among qualified (162+ IP) starters, with the strikeout total checking third.

I spent nearly 1000 words realistically setting wet blanketing expectations for Scherzer’s return to the National League, but the funny thing is that I’m not down on him at all. I just wanted to bring down the expectations from some of the stratospheric levels I’d seen in articles, heard on podcasts, and read on Twitter (your source for the most sound reactions to… anything).

The improvements in ERA, WHIP, and strikeout rate by shifting from the AL to NL aren’t nearly as high as many seem to think, but an elite-level pitcher getting any sort of uptick can result in a special season. There is a real case for Scherzer to be the second starter off the board behind Kershaw. Considering that I have Strasburg ahead of him on his own team, I wouldn’t do it, but the difference between a Felix Hernandez at two and Scherzer at, say, five or six (I haven’t settled on his spot just yet) is minimal.