Braves on the Brink of Signing a Pitching Legend: Future Hall of Famer Set to Join Atlanta’s Rotation

The Atlanta Braves have been tabbed to be the ones to sign a future hall-of-fame starting pitcher.

Sports Illustrated’s Will Laws and Nick Selbe have predicted that they will sign Max Scherzer. While his 2024 season was plagued by injuries, the three-time Cy Young Award winner still has something to offer if he’s healthy.

“Scherzer finally started to show his age in a campaign riddled with injuries that featured his lowest strikeout rate (22.6%) since 2011 in the nine games he did manage to toe the rubber,” they wrote. “If he can regain good health, however, you can bet most hitters still wouldn’t relish facing down Mad Max.”

This might be the start of a trending prediction. Just Baseball’s Max Finkelstein made a similar prediction last week.

In nine starts last season, Scherzer had a 3.95 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP and 40 strikeouts in 43 1/3 innings. While those are subpar by his standard, at the right price, it would be worth seeing if they could get that over 25 or so starts.

Scherzer hasn’t pitched in 30 games since 2021, but in the previous two seasons, he made at least 23. In those 50 regular-season starts split between the New York Mets and Texas Rangers, he had a 3.05 ERA, a 1.01 WHIP and a 133 ERA+.

For his entire career, well, he’s one of the best of his era and arguably one of the best to ever take the mount.

Along with those three Cy Young Awards, Scherzer was a finalist three other times for the award as well as an eight-time all-star and a two-time World Series champion. He led the National League in strikeouts from 2016 to 2018, the third being a 300-strikeout season. He had at least 200 strikeouts in nine different seasons, all of which saw him punch out at least 230. In seven different seasons, he had a WHIP below 1.00.

He’s been solid in the postseason historically as well with a 3.78 ERA in 35 career appearances. His recent postseason appearances have inflated his ERA a tad. Heading into 2022, his career postseason ERA was 3.21.

It’s a move with risk. The Braves would be banking on him still having something left in the tank at 40 years old.

But even if he’s not who he used to be, just the name alone brings some excitement as to what he could still potentially bring to the table. Something about having him and Chris Sale in the same rotation still has a nice ring to it.

And while this is a bit of an old-school mindset, he brings a strong veteran presence to the locker room. That can help the morale.

He wants to pitch in 2025. The Braves could use another arm. If they can agree to a deal that both sides think is reasonable, then this could be worth a shot.