The past several seasons have been something of a renaissance for Max Scherzer.
The 32-year-old Nationals ace, who’s won two Cy Young awards since 2013 and recently notched his 2,000th strikeout, looks to be in the midst of another fine season. He’s jumped out to an 8-5 record with a National League-best 2.09 ERA while his Nationals lead the NL East.
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On Wednesday, Scherzer took a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Marlins, which prompted a beat writer to point out that Scherzer’s actually taken no-hitters at least six innings in 13.4 percent of his starts with the Nationals. Scherzer’s been so good, it didn’t seem like that outlandish of a stat. It was just one more thing for a pitcher at his peak.
Scherzer, who didn’t win his first game until two months before his 25th birthday, is starting to look like he has a decent chance at the Hall of Fame. At 133 wins as of this writing, he should easily top 200 barring injury, with 250 a reasonable possibility. Historically, 200 wins has more or less been the low bar to clear for Hall of Fame pitchers. At 250 wins, enshrinement becomes increasingly certain, though there are some exceptions.
Even 300 wins — which pretty much cements a pitcher’s case — isn’t out of the realm of possibility for Scherzer, though he’d need to win 16-18 games a season into his early 40s to make it happen. That could be a push. Regardless, he looks on track for 70 WAR and 40 Wins Above Average, two rough sabermetric benchmarks for Hall of Fame pitchers.
Scherzer could eventually become a serious Hall of Fame candidate. That said, the same signs of Scherzer’s brilliance the past several seasons also suggest his case for Cooperstown will be no open-and-shut matter. If history is any guide, Scherzer’s Hall of Fame case is still very much up in the air.
Cooperstown chances: 50 percent
Why: Wins are one rudimentary way to roughly gauge a pitcher’s effectiveness. Wins are, of course, team-dependent and don’t always reflect a pitcher’s brilliance. After all, Scherzer somehow wound up with the loss Wednesday. Still, wins give at least a rough idea of where a pitcher belongs. By his 116 wins from his age-25 through his age-31 seasons, 2010 through the end of last year, Scherzer’s in somewhat rare company.
Accoding to the Play Index tool on Baseball-Reference.com, 36 other pitchers since 1950 have won at least 110 games between these years of their careers. Of this group, 17 are in the Hall of Fame. In order of wins in these years, these men are:
- Juan Marichal, with 154 wins (and exactly zero Cy Young Award votes) from 1963 to 1969;
- Fergie Jenkins, 146 wins, 1968 to 1974;
- Robin Roberts, 143 wins, 1952 to 1958;
- Catfish Hunter, 137 wins, 1971 to 1977;
- Jim Palmer, 135 wins, 1971 to 1977;
- Sandy Koufax, 129 wins, 1961 to 1966 (with no age-31 season);
- Tom Seaver, 125 wins, 1970 to 1976;
- Don Drysdale, 125 wins, 1962 to 1968;
- Don Sutton, 125 wins, 1970 to 1976;
- Greg Maddux, 124 wins, 1991 to 1997;
- Nolan Ryan, 122 wins, 1972 to 1978;
- Steve Carlton, 121 wins, 1970 to 1976;
- Tom Glavine, 120 wins, 1991 to 1997;
- Bob Gibson, 119 wins, 1961 to 1967;
- Pedro Martinez, 118 wins, 1997 to 2003;
- Gaylord Perry, 114 wins, 1964 to 1970;
- Jim Bunning, 110 wins, 1957 to 1963.
Would this appear to give Scherzer reasonably good Hall of Fame odds? Probably. In fact, because pitcher win totals have declined over the years with the shift from four-man to five-man rotations and the rise of relief pitchers, Scherzer’s win totals between his age-25 and age-31 seasons actually undersell him a bit. His 21.8 Wins Above Average between those years are tied for 17th-best of any pitcher since 1950, with just seven Hall of Famers in front of him.
That said, some of the names on the list of the 19 non-Hall of Famers who have at least 110 games between their age-25 and age-31 seasons are also striking. While a few of the men in the group, such as Mike Mussina, Roger Clemens and Jack Morris, seem to have reasonably good Hall of Fame odds at this point, the majority are pitchers who for one reason or another have never come remotely close to Cooperstown.
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The five most unlikely Hall of Famers among this group could be cautionary tales for Scherzer. Like him, they were mostly on top of the baseball world at age 31, though it was a quick descent thereafter in almost every case. These men are:
Frank Lary: Won 117 games for the Tigers from 1955 through 1961, capped by a 23-9 season for the terminally underrated ‘61 Tigers. His SABR bio notes that “he suffered a sore arm in 1962 and did not enjoy the same success thereafter,” with Lary going just 11-23 the rest of his career.
Dave McNally: Remembered more today for partnering with Andy Messersmith to successfully challenge baseball’s Reseve Clause in 1975 than for winning 133 games the preceding seven seasons.
Dennis Leonard: The forgotten ace of the late 1970s and early 1980s Royals, Leonard won just 14 more games after his age-31 season. It’s not difficult to see one of these columns being pecked out for Leonard around 1980.
Claude Osteen: Like Scherzer, Osteen came to the majors highly touted and needed several years to make good. He later won 20 games twice for the Dodgers, making three National League All-Star teams, though his 196-195 career record and 3.30 lifetime ERA are fairly pedestrian for the years he pitched and the teams for which he played.
Bob Friend: To sum extent, Friend’s an example of the misleading nature of the win-loss statistic, going 28-50 for some dreadful Pirates teams as a young pitcher in the 1950s. Later, his Bucs — and his win totals — each improved, though Friend’s case suffered more with him winning just 44 games after his age-31 season. He’s fondly remembered for his role on some superb Pirates teams, including the 1960 world championship club, for which he went 18-12, but that’s the closest he’ll come to Cooperstown.
Anything can happen in baseball. A pitcher ruling the game can be a forgotten man because of injuries or other factors in just a couple of short years. It's clear, of course, that Scherzer is in a class all his own as of this writing, maybe baseball's best pitcher at the moment. Hopefully for Scherzer and his National League East-leading Nationals, he thrives for many seasons to come.