Jordan Zimmermann or Max Scherzer: who’s the ace in D.C.?

I don’t remember exactly where I saw it, but I do remember seeing it. Someone, following Max Scherzer‘s signing of the $200 million plus deal with the Washington Nationals, said something along the lines of “the Nationals did not improve with Scherzer.” This unique — hey, I am being nice — take on the Scherzer addition prompted me to Tweet the following.

Washington’s new right-handed pitcher has been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball over the past three seasons. In fact, from 2012 to 2014 Scherzer compiled the third best fWAR (16.5) among qualifying starting pitchers, trailing only Clayton Kershaw (19.2) and Felix Hernandez (17.9). His 10.46 K/9 ranked second behind only Yu Darvish using the same criteria (qualified starters and stats from ’12-’14) and his 3.24 ERA ranked 22nd.

Obviously recent stats carry more weight than stats from one or two years ago. With that in mind, it would be misleading of me not to divulge Scherzer’s stats from last season and where he stacked up against the competition (other starting pitchers.) In terms of fWAR, his 5.6 total placed seventh between qualified starters. His 3.15 ERA slated him 26th in the league, his 2.85 FIP ranked 11th, and he managed to accrue the eighth most innings in baseball.

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Add his excellent 2014 season to his stellar 2013 campaign and his, in a way, breakout ’12 season, and you get one of the most consistent and dominating pitchers in the majors.

You probably did not need these stats to know Scherzer’s a pretty special pitcher. The fact he landed a contract north of $200 million dollars probably would have been (and is) just as telling. But now we have viable data to back up that claim and that’s entirely the point of my above Tweet. Unless the Nationals’ rotation consisted of Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, Chris Sale, and last year’s version of Corey Kluber, they do improve with Scherzer.

Now, this isn’t to say the Nats’ rotation before Max was not very good, because it really was very good. But I don’t see a sane baseball fan being able to argue with any success that Tanner Roark, Doug Fister and Gio Gonzalez are better bets to thrive in ’15 than Scherzer.

I don’t see it with Stephen Strasburg either, but at least it is not as insane. Jordan Zimmermann, however, has a feasible case to being the better pitcher. And that is exactly what some friends tried to argue in response to my original Tweet.

Cody’s concern is valid, surely. There have been rumors flying around that with last week and half’s Scherzer signing, the Nats may move Strasburg or Zimmermann (or both?). The keyword here, though, is “may.” And that’s exactly what I touched on in my rebuttal Tweet.

Okay. I’ll admit that I have a tendency to underrate Zimmermann, for whatever reason. I have always looked at him subjectively as a tremendous pitcher, but not in the arbitrary top-class of pitchers that I have established in my head. Given how good both Zimmermann and Scherzer are, it should not be surprising that I received the following response.

To which I replied:

For the simplicity of full disclosure let’s get this out of the way right now: the reason Scherzer’s fWAR totals are so much better is because of his peripherals — in other words, because he strikes so many people out. Here are Scherzer’s K/9 rates in each of the last three years compared to the MLB average for that year.

• 2012 (187 2/3 IP): 11.08 K/9 | League-average: 7.56 K/9
• 2013 (214 1/3 IP): 10.08 K/9 | League-average: 7.57 K/9
• 2014 (220 1/3 IP): 10.29 K/9 | League-average: 7.73 K/9

Zimmermann, save last year, produced strikeout per nine rates below the league-average for the past three seasons.

• 2012 (195 2/3 IP): 7.04 K/9 | League-average: 7.56 K/9
• 2013 (213 1/3 IP): 6.79 K/9 | League-average: 7.57 K/9
• 2014 (199 2/3 IP): 8.20 K/9 | League-average: 7.73 K/9

Strikeouts are not the only way to get outs, but they sure are the easiest. Strikeouts, for the most part, do not have to be balls in play where the fielders have to make a play on the ball to secure the out. With that said, getting an abundance of strike-three whiffs is not the only way to be an effective pitcher at preventing runs from scoring.

There are pitchers who do so by yielding weak contact; there are pitchers who do so by not allowing a lot of free passes; and there are those who do so by just being plain lucky. Zimmermann, last year at least, did so by striking batters out at an above-average rate, walking batters relatively infrequently, having a sterling HR/FB ratio, inducing a good amount of infield flies, and pitching against inferior opponents.

The latter is something that Jeff Sullivan addressed in his piece on Fangraphs earlier in the month. Here’s an excerpt below.

"“And for what it’s worth, he’s done all this in the American League, and in the AL Central. In 2013, Scherzer’s average opponent had a 96 wRC+. Last year, his average opponent had a 100 wRC+. Two years ago, Jordan Zimmermann’s average opponent had an 89 wRC+. Last year, 91.”"

All of the talked about factors led Jordan to sport the 12th-best ERA in baseball among qualifiers with his 2.66 ERA in ’14. In the end, a pitcher’s job is to put his team in a position to win and the best way to do that is to not allow runs to score.

Zimmermann was better at this than Scherzer in ’14 but outside factors such as the defense behind them, random variation, etc. skewed the results so that we can’t say for sure who was the better pitcher last year. Scherzer pitched more innings and while there’s value to that, Zimmermann’s FIP was also better in 2014 than Scherzer’s.

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Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that Zimmerman was the better pitcher in 2014 on a per inning basis (FIP, ERA) but Scherzer was more valuable cumulatively (fWAR, IP).

The year before that when Scherzer took home the American League Cy Young award, the $200 million man was unquestionably the more dominant pitcher of the two, edging Zimmermann in ERA, FIP, fWAR and innings pitched. In ’12 Scherzer, meanwhile, was better in terms of FIP and fWAR but Zimmermann bested him in ERA and innings pitched.

I believe all of the above stats are very much important. How heavily you weigh each when determining a pitcher’s worth is subjective.

Here are a few more intriguing things regarding the Zimmermann vs. Scherzer comparison from the discussion I had with Richie on Twitter.

Max Scherzer and Jordan Zimmermann are both terrific pitchers–they’re probably both are top-ten right now or at least top fifteen. If I had to pick, I’d say Scherzer is the best of the two pitchers. But that is a subjective take. Given all this information and your preexisting knowledge of these guys, who would you say is the ace in Washington D.C.?