Rangers' Max Scherzer done for season after IL placement

The Rangers announced on Saturday that they’ve placed veteran right-hander Max Scherzer on the 15-day injured list due to a strained left hamstring. Right-hander Gerson Garabito was recalled to take Scherzer’s place on the active roster. Scherzer was scheduled to start tonight’s game against the Mariners, but that start will go to right-hander Dane Dunning instead.

The news brings to an end Scherzer’s 2024 season. In all, Scherzer managed just nine starts and 43 1/3 innings of work this year, the first time since his rookie year back in 2008 when he pitched less than 145 1/3 innings in a 162-game season. His results weren’t especially dominant even when healthy enough to take the mound, either. His 92.6mph average on his fastball was the lowest of his career, while a 22.6% strikeout rate, 3.95 ERA (100 ERA+), and a 4.18 FIP were all closer to pedestrian than elite. Since being acquired from the Mets in exchange for infield prospect Luisangel Acuna last summer, the veteran righty has pitched to a 3.57 ERA with a 3.79 FIP in 88 1/3 innings of work for Texas.

Those may turn out to be the only innings Scherzer pitches in a Rangers uniform. The future Hall of Famer’s contract in Texas runs only through the end of the current campaign, and he now appears ticketed for another trip through free agency. Scherzer celebrated his 40th birthday back in July and has dealt with a number of injury concerns this year ranging from offseason back surgery to nerve irritation in his throwing hand and triceps area on different occasions, but that hasn’t stopped the veteran from planning to continue pitching next year.

Even on the heels of the first injury-marred campaign of his career, Scherzer’s overall resume speaks for itself: the veteran boasts more than 3400 strikeouts in his career to go with eight career All-Star appearances, three Cy Young award wins, and three additional years wherein he was a finalist for the awards. The right-hander hasn’t posted an ERA north of 4.00 or a below-average ERA+ since 2011, and since then he sports a 2.95 ERA and 3.00 FIP, to say nothing of his career 3.78 ERA and 28.8% strikeout rate in the postseason and the two World Series rings he’s earned as a result of those 143 innings of work in the playoffs over the years. Still, at Scherzer’s age and coming off a platform season that raised plenty of questions about his ability to act as the workhorse starting pitcher he was throughout his 30s now that he’s entering his 40s, it’s not entirely clear what sort of market awaits the veteran ace in free agency.

Texas has exciting young arms like Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter coming up from the farm system to join a 2025 rotation corps that includes Dunning, Jacob deGrom, Jon Gray, Cody Bradford and Tyler Mahle, but a return to the Rangers certainly can’t be ruled out. After all, Scherzer is likely to be joined in heading for free agency by Nathan Eovaldi, Andrew Heaney, and Jose Urena. That quartet has combined to start 74 of the Rangers’ 154 games to this point in the season, or nearly half of the club’s contests. Given the combination of youth and lengthy injury histories at play in Texas’s current rotation group headed into next year, it would hardly be a surprise to see the club prioritize adding at least one arm to help carry the load of the departing starters.

Of course, a player with Scherzer’s storied resume could easily draw interest from plenty of other clubs in the league. The right-hander’s former teams in Detroit and D.C. are both seemingly ready to take the next step after lengthy rebuilding periods and could benefit from adding a veteran arm to their young rotations, and Scherzer’s hometown Cardinals appear likely to try and revamp their rotation mix behind staff ace Sonny Gray after their second-straight disappointing season. Given the ace’s talent when healthy and the fact that his age and recent injury history appear likely to limit him to a short-term deal, there’s countless teams that could reasonably be positioned to take a chance on the 40-year-old future Hall of Famer this winter.