Should the Colorado Rockies pursue Max Scherzer in free agency?

The Colorado Rockies have long made it a philosophy to stay away from large, blockbuster-type signings in free agency. The stinks of the Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle contracts continue to inform that philosophy.

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Nothing is forever, of course, and these types of philosophies tend to be cyclical. Furthermore, the Rockies will benefit as a franchise if their front office realizes that each player’s situation is distinct and that each player must be considered individually, instead of employing a blanket approach.

At some point, the Rockies will once again make a big, splashy signing. Could that come this off-season? Would Max Scherzer of the Detroit Tigers be the type of ace whom the Rockies should aggressively pursue in free agency?

In a column released earlier this month, Jim Bowden of ESPN suggested that the Rockies should do just that (insider subscription required). The move is offered as one of seven to fix the Rockies, along with promoting Jon Gray and Eddie Butler and trading Charlie Blackmon to the Reds for Mat Latos, among others.

The idea here is not to go point by point through those moves, since many are far-fetched and the idea of signing Scherzer is only one in that series of suggestions. The idea is to look at what Bowden suggests it would take for the Rockies to sign Scherzer or another ace, and look at the pros and cons of that potential move for the Rockies as things stand now.

In order to do so, we must note two key points about Bowden’s suggestion:

• He notes that the Rockies would need to offer the most years and the most money, overpaying to get Scherzer’s agent Scott Boras to recommend signing.
• He argues that Scherzer’s stuff would translate to Coors Field. This is important in terms of the philosophical conversation that follows.

With those factors in mind, here are the arguments for and against trying to sign Scherzer this off-season.

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For it: take the pressure off Eddie Butler and Jon Gray

​If you were listing the top takeaways from this 2014 season for the Rockies, you would ultimately start with the same issue that has plagued this franchise since its inaugural season: they need more pitching.

In the midst of that frustration, a commonly held complaint is this one: why don’t the Rockies ever have any young, hot-shot pitchers who have an impact in the starting rotation? Why don’t the Rockies ever have the stud prospect everybody is talking about?

For the first time in recent memory and possibly in franchise history, the Rockies have two of those blue-chip guys in Eddie Butler and Jon Gray. With those profiles has come a tremendous amount of pressure for each young man, however, something Butler experienced when he made his very brief debut back in June.

As we experienced with Drew Pomeranz, nothing is guaranteed with these pitching prospects. That is especially true for the Rockies, an organization still trying to prove that they can develop pitching at all.

Expectations are going to be so ridiculously high for these two, especially for Gray, that the Rockies might benefit from having a high-profile guy like Scherzer to absorb some of the hype. If they somehow signed Scherzer and brought Jorge De La Rosa back, then it would allow Gray and Butler to arrive to less fanfare and less pressure to be saviors.

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Against it: The overpay is too risky

Six years from now, Max Scherzer will be 36 years old. As if that isn’t a risky enough proposition to consider on its own, we have a cautionary tale to observe on Scherzer’s own team in Justin Verlander.

Verlander, at age 31, had no injury history and no real signs of concern entering this season. Suddenly his velocity is down, his numbers are worse, and the Tigers might even start kicking around the idea of using him out of the bullpen this season.

This season is 2014, in case anybody forgot. Verlander’s $180 million deal runs all the way through 2019, with yearly hits of $28 million starting next season. The Rockies aren’t talking about quite that much annual money in this hypothetical offer, but they still cannot afford to be paying $20 million for a guy like Scherzer if he were to start declining.

Scherzer is his own man, as is Verlander. Scherzer might hold up better or he might hold up worse. At this point, nobody knows, but there is going to be risk for any team that offers him a five-year deal, let alone the six-year deal under consideration here.

Teams can offer those kinds of overpays and get away with it, but it requires some creativity and open-minded management in the middle years of the contract to do so. That brings us to the final, and most important, argument against the Rockies even trying to sign Scherzer this off-season.

-USA TODAY Sports

Against it: Don’t trust this front office

As we indulge the unlikely possibility of the Rockies signing a guy like Scherzer, this is the most important point of all. In order for this to be an acceptable plan, the Rockies have to be thinking two or three steps ahead down the road.

They need to be considering how they can maximize the value of this deal around years three and four. For example, let’s say it is year three of the imaginary Scherzer era in Colorado. Let’s also say that he is still an effective, top of the rotation guy, but not necessarily the elite ace for whom the Rockies overpaid in the first place.

At that point, regardless of whether the Rockies are buyers or sellers or contenders or basement dwellers, they would be wise to look for a pitching-needy team, perhaps even a big market pitching-needy team, and try to execute a trade. Maybe they would end up absorbing some money on the back end to do so, but to think ahead to that sort of proactive move has to be part of this plan if ever it becomes a plan.

Does anybody out there trust this Rockies’ front office to approach their business that way? Anybody?

Someday the Rockies might be positioned to pursue a guy like Scherzer, as suggested by Bowden and discussed here. But that time isn’t now, and it will only arrive when the state of the franchise is different and when the men in charge are more forward-thinking than the current regime.

That might not be for a long, looooong time.

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