After a late night in New York, and a three-hour loss to the Mets, the Washington Nationals had to travel back to the nation’s capital for a 4:05 start in the opening game of their three-game series with the Atlanta Braves.
Dusty Baker decided to give a number of his regulars the day off, so he was counting on starter Max Scherzer.
“Scherzer’s the freshest guy in the clubhouse,” Baker told reporters before Monday’s game.
“He came early yesterday and I talked to him about it and he goes, ‘Hey, man, this is my job.’ He know the responsibility, he knows how the guys are dragging.”
“This is kind of like Spring Training where a lot of times my second team played better than my first team, so...”
The Nationals provided Scherzer with plenty of support, with a five-run third putting them up 5-1 after they’d fallen behind early on an RBI double by Jace Peterson in the second.
Scherzer held the Braves to the one run through five innings, then gave up back-to-back hits to the first two batters he faced in the sixth, Nick Markakis, who doubled, and Anthony Recker, who singled to left.
Markakis took third on Recker’s hit and scored when Peterson grounded into a force at second in the next at bat to make it 6-2.
Scherzer threw 29 pitches total in the sixth, pushing him up to 99 overall, so there was some question about him going back out until the right-hander argued his case.
“He’s full of determination,” Baker told reporters after the 6-4 win.
“We were going to take him out after the sixth, cause they had some dangerous hitters coming up and they were starting to hit the ball pretty well and Scherzer said, ‘Hey, man, no, I want to go back out there.’”
Scherzer said his argument for returning to the mound was even briefer than that.
“Basically two words: ‘I’m good.’”
“You just know where you’re at physically,” Scherzer explained after the game.
“You know how the ball is coming out of your hand and I just knew that even at [99] pitches I was still strong and I knew I had 115 in the tank, so I knew that I was good to go out there for the seventh.
“The only thing that might have changed my mind is if it was going to be a long [bottom of the] inning. You have a long inning, that’s a time where you have to loosen back up and you have to be honest with yourself and say that’s an opportunity to come out of the game, but it was a quick sixth inning for us and so I wanted the ball.”
We're through 5 full in DC. #Nats 6, Braves 1 #OnePursuit pic.twitter.com/pCwP7Ag8Tu
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 5, 2016
Nats’ catcher Jose Lobaton singled to start the home-half of the sixth, but it was a relatively quick inning, so Scherzer returned for an eight pitch seventh in which he worked around a two-out error for a scoreless frame.
He worked out of early trouble and finished strong, and pointed to walks to the Braves’ catcher in the second and fourth innings as mistakes that caused him trouble along the way.
“I didn’t pitch [Anthony] Recker well today,” Scherzer said. “Those two walks kind of opened up some innings, but I was able to get some big strikeouts in that situation and get some weak contact and that just avoided the big inning.
“Didn’t give up the big hit, even though I was giving up hits today, I never gave up the big hit and with [Lobaton] behind the plate, we’re starting to have a rapport of what we need to throw and I really felt like I had a good changeup today, and he could recognize that and was calling for it and he’s got that great little target and allowed me to throw right at him.”
Scherzer gave up seven hits, the two walks and two earned runs, throwing 107 pitches total, 77 for strikes, with nine groundouts and five fly ball outs, and he earned his 16th win.