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Max Scherzer Lays Claim To Being Baseball's Best Pitcher
7 years agoClayton Kershaw may be the first pitcher off the boards in fantasy baseball, but it’s Max Scherzer who has beaten him out for the Cy Young Award two years in a row. The Nationals’ ace once again put up stellar numbers in 2017, starting 31 games and grinding out 200 innings. He struck out 268 batters, giving him a 12.02 K/9 rate, and walked only 55 batters en route to a 2.51 ERA and an 0.90 WHIP. A low BABIP of .245 and XFIP of 3.28 indicates that the defense helped him out of a few jams, especially since over half his games were against a weak NL East division. Home runs have traditionally been Scherzer’s Achilles heel, but he largely minimized the damage in 2017. He gave up nine fewer homers than in 2016 and brought his HR/FB rate down a percent from 11.9% in 2016 to 10.8%. In terms of pitch selection, he dropped his four-seam fastball usage to below 50% for the first time in his career to 48.6%. This meant he increased his changeup (12.1%) and slider (20.7%) usage to 14.1% and 24.7%, respectively, from 2016 to 2017. About the only red flag on the season was Scherzer’s first stints on the DL for injuries to his neck, calf and hamstring. Still, “Mad” Max is as steady as they come and with Kershaw’s back problems over the last few seasons, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think of Scherzer as the de facto SP1.
