Article: Why PECOTA Loves Max Scherzer

[Davy Andrews]

Projection systems think Max Scherzer still has another gear. Why might that be, and should we believe them?

PECOTA is the projection system used by Baseball Prospectus, and you often hear about it because it doesn’t expect much from a player or team that you love. That’s how projection systems work; they’re inherently conservative, so if a player had a great 2024 season, they’ll expect that player to regress back to the mean in 2025. They’re usually right. Today, however, we’re talking about a player PECOTA loves: new Blue Jay Max Scherzer. PECOTA likes Scherzer because it expects him to regress in the other direction, putting up his best season since 2022.

Baseball Prospectus’s flagship pitching metric is DRA-, Deserved Run Average Minus. Essentially, DRA is an ERA estimator, telling you what ERA a pitcher deserved to have. The minus part just puts that number on a scale where 100 is the league average, so that it’s easy to read. In 2024, Scherzer had a 3.95 ERA, but because a lot of his underlying metrics were very worrisome, DRA had him at 4.71, the worst mark of his entire career. That translated to a DRA- of 106, also the worst mark of Scherzer’s career. However, in 2025, PECOTA projects Scherzer’s ERA to be down to 3.54 and his DRA- to be down to 94, a huge improvement that would take him from being six points worse than league average to six points better. That number is also better than the 98 DRA- Scherzer put up in 2023. PECOTA doesn’t just think that 2024 was an outlier, it thinks that entering his age-40 season, he’ll pitch better than he has in two seasons, as do projection systems like ZiPS and OOPSY (yes, projection systems are legally required to have silly names). Today we're taking a closer look at the projections to see why that might be.

Before we get to the good stuff, let’s get one scary thing out of the way. Scherzer pitched just 43 1/3 innings in 2024, and PECOTA only projects him for 46 1/3 in 2025. That’s understandable, considering Scherzer’s age and injury history, but the other projection systems are more bullish, and I think it’s fair to expect him to get to somewhere around 100 innings in 2025.

The big reason that PECOTA expects big things from Scherzer is that after running a career-low 22.6% strikeout rate in 2024, he’s projected to bounce back to 25.5%. The other projection systems agree. That would still be way below his career mark of 29.3% and miles below the career-best 35.1% he put up in 2019, but it would bring Scherzer back to one of the higher marks among all starting pitchers. I can think of a couple reasons that Scherzer might be projected to strike more batters out. The big reason is velocity. Although Scherzer’s four-seam fastball has been falling in velocity for years, it took its biggest drop by far in 2024.

Over the past five years, the drop-off was pretty gradual, never exceeding 0.4 mph. Then in 2024, it fell by a huge 1.3 mph. Not coincidentally, Scherzer battled multiple injuries in 2024. Even though he’s 40, we should probably expect his velocity to tick up at least a little bit, as long as he’s healthy. That would go a long way toward helping him miss more bats and rack up more strikeouts.

Even though Scherzer’s stuff took a step back last season, the advanced stuff metrics still like his cutter and slider quite a bit. Even if he has to use the fastball less, they still offer a path to production for him. The last factor is simple regression to the mean. Over the past two seasons, Scherzer has run a 14.1% home run per fly ball rate. As a four-seamer specialist who lives at the top of the zone, Scherzer will with an elevated HR/FB rate, we should probably expect it to come down some; especially if Scherzer’s stuff ticks back up or if he focuses more on pitches that are harder to lift.

The larger argument has less to do with numbers. Scherzer has already had a Hall of Fame career, and the last time he ran an ERA over 4.00 was 2011. His repertoire and approach have changed over the years, but he’s always found success. Every great pitcher turns into a pumpkin at some point, but it makes sense to give Scherzer the benefit of the doubt. That said, all of these arguments are predicated on Scherzer getting back to something resembling health and not pitching while compromised. It could turn out that's simply too much to ask of him at this stage in his career. Scherzer is a max-effort kind of pitcher, but keeping him fresh and, relatively speaking, in top form will be the real key.

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