This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo's Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The way Max Scherzer sees it, to stress his 200th career win would be to miss the larger picture. Though he’s remained stuck on 199 career wins for three starts now, it’s a foregone conclusion that Scherzer will join Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke as the only active pitchers in that exclusive club at some point. In the meantime, he and the Mets have other things on their minds as they prep for a deep October run.  

“The way I look at it is, it’s going to happen,” Scherzer said on Saturday night, after those priorities pulled him early from his start against the Nationals. “For me, we’ve got bigger things that can happen this season than my milestones.”

That doesn’t mean we can’t ruminate on it in this space. Despite falling short of becoming the third active pitcher with 200 wins, Scherzer on Saturday leapfrogged Verlander as the game’s active strikeout leader. He also remains baseball’s all-time leader in strikeouts per nine and the active leader in double-digit strikeout games. Scherzer ranks second among active pitchers in WHIP and third in innings.

That got us thinking: What other milestones could Scherzer reach? Let’s look at a few big ones, in order of likelihood: 

Top 10 all-time strikeouts
Odds: Good

This is where Scherzer has the best chance of climbing the all-time ranks. Scherzer’s 3,173 punchouts are already good for 13th all time, 19 behind Fergie Jenkins and 169 behind Phil Niekro. After that, it’s Greg Maddux, 198 whiffs away, at 10th all time. Scherzer has already amassed 153 strikeouts in 127 2/3 innings this season, so he’d need to only barely eclipse his 2022 total the rest of the way to enter the top 10.   

3,000 IP 
Odds: Fair

Is 3,000 innings a milestone? At the very least, it’s an exclusive club. Only 136 pitchers in MLB history have been durable enough to reach 3,000 innings, including 22 whose careers ended in 2000 or later. Scherzer needs 335 2/3 more innings -- which is a hair shy of his total since the start of 2021. Scherzer is signed through 2023 with a player option for ’24, so, if he pitches at least two more seasons, it's certainly possible.   

First ERA title 
Odds: Long

Scherzer’s resume features four single-season wins titles, three strikeout crowns and three Cy Young Awards. But he’s never won an ERA title, placing second twice (including in '21, when he finished only three points behind NL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes). This year, performance isn’t the issue. It’s volume.

If it weren’t for the month and a half that Scherzer missed with an oblique injury, he’d likely be right in the middle of the Cy Young conversation again. Scherzer is second in both ERA and WHIP among NL pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched, but he’s tossed only 127 2/3 innings through his team’s first 135 games. That means he needs 34 1/3 IP over the Mets’ final 27 games -- six starts, max. He’d need to average about 5 2/3 innings per start and make all six to qualify.

Not impossible, but far from a slam dunk, especially given Scherzer’s recent health scare.

Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru contributed research to this report.