By Ken Rosenthal, Brittany Ghiroli, Will Sammon, Tim Britton and Eno Sarris
The Mets traded eight-time All-Star Max Scherzer to the Rangers, league sources confirmed to The Athletic on Saturday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Scherzer, who recently turned 39, will not opt out of his contract after this season and will remain with the Rangers through 2024, a major-league source confirmed. ESPN first reported the news.
- New York receives shortstop Luisangel Acuña in the deal, while Texas will get roughly $36 million, covering Scherzer’s remaining salary for 2023 and a portion of his salary for 2024 since Scherzer agreed to opt in, major-league sources confirmed.
- Scherzer is in his second season with the Mets. He agreed to a three-year, $130 million deal with New York in November 2021.
- The three-time Cy Young winner posted an ERA of 4.01 with 121 strikeouts in 19 starts with the Mets this season.
The Athletic’s instant analysis:
How Scherzer fits with Rangers
I like this move for both teams and it’s not often you can say that immediately. Scherzer going to a win-now Rangers team helps boost a Texas rotation missing Jacob deGrom.
While Scherzer hasn’t been in his typical Cy Young form, he will be reunited with pitching coach Mike Maddux, who was with the Nationals in the same role in both the seasons Scherzer won Cy Young there. Scherzer is a fierce competitor and may be buoyed by playing in games down the stretch for a contender. — Ghiroli
What are the Mets getting back?
Industry sources had indicated the Mets were listening on their star pitchers in the hopes of being blown away by a prospect offer they couldn’t refuse. Acuña is the 21-year-old younger brother of Atlanta’s Ronald and a consensus top-100 prospect. (Acuña’s father, Ronald Sr., was a minor-leaguer in the Mets system back at the turn of the century.)
Acuña entered Saturday hitting .315 with a .377 on-base percentage and .453 slugging percentage for Frisco. He shares the athleticism and quick hands of his older brother, and he’ll need to refine his aggressive approach to get the most out of his game offensively. Regarding aggressiveness, evaluators say he is getting better with his zone awareness. Acuña is in his first year on Texas’ 40-man roster.
Multiple league sources said Acuña profiles as an above-average big-league player. One evaluator said he has the ceiling of someone like Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies in part because of a speed-power combination as an up-the-middle player.
In two trades now, the Mets have prioritized position-player returns and have not focused on landing players who can help as soon as 2024. In the Robertson trade earlier in the week, they landed a pair of teenagers opening eyes in the Complex League. — Sammon
What this means for the Mets
The Mets had announced their intentions to sell with Thursday night’s trade of David Robertson to the Marlins — a move that, while unsurprising, was jarring enough for Scherzer to talk publicly Friday night about wanting a conversation with the Mets’ front office about the direction of the franchise.
Not 24 hours later, Scherzer approved a trade out of New York to Texas.
It’s hard to gauge what precisely this means for the direction of the franchise without a firmer feel for the return and the money exchanged. Even as he’s talked about creating a sustainable pipeline of talent, owner Steve Cohen hasn’t shied away from dipping back into his pocket this winter.
There will be premium starting pitching talent available with players much younger than Scherzer (who turned 39 this past week), than Justin Verlander (40), than José Quintana (34). Shohei Ohtani (who will play next season at 29) leads the market, of course, but there will also be Julio Urías (27 next year) and potentially Yoshinobu Yamamoto (25 next year), if posted from the Orix Buffaloes in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. — Britton
GO DEEPER
MLB trade grades: Mets’ sell-off continues with Max Scherzer to Rangers
Scherzer’s stuff not quite what it used to be
Age comes for us all. Scherzer’s fastball is at a nine-year low in velocity, the spin rate on his fastball is at an all-time low, his fastball is at a three-year low in ride and his average slider velocity has only once been this low before in his career.
All of this is captured by Stuff+, which looks only at the physical characteristics of a pitch, and he’s at a four-year low in that number, too.
Scherzer’s still got decent stuff, though. He’s got a top-15 strikeout rate among qualified pitchers, for one. Even by Stuff+, he still has five average to above-average pitches and rates above-average overall. Once you factor in his walk rate, you still get a top-15 pitcher by the powerful strikeout-minus-walk statistic.
The aspect of his results most out of whack with his history is his home run rate, and that’s a statistic that is full of noise in small samples. He’s never given up anywhere close to two homers per nine innings in his career, so that’s likely to improve over the next two months.
Two things can be true. Max Scherzer is not who he used to be, at 39 years old. And Max Scherzer is probably still a top-15 pitcher in the league. — Sarris
Backstory
Scherzer was traded to the Dodgers by the Nationals in July 2021, starting 19 games with Washington and 11 games with Los Angeles that season. Scherzer also spent the earlier part of his career with the Diamondbacks and Tigers. He boasts a career ERA of 3.15 with 3,314 strikeouts and 440 starts.
Required reading
(Photo: Rich Schultz / Getty Images)
