Loss to Mets made worse by early loss of Scherzer (updated)

The images were unusual and alarming. Max Scherzer, throwing at less than full velocity and with less than full extension. Looking uncomfortable as he walked off the mound at the end of a laborious top of the first. Talking with the training staff upon returning to the dugout as Erick Fedde began furiously warming up in the bullpen.

The Nationals lost tonight's ballgame, 3-1 to the Mets. They can only hope they didn't also lose their ace to a significant injury, not that any injury is insignificant in this 60-game dash to October.

The initial word from the three-time Cy Young Award winner? It's not significant, only a "tweaked" right hamstring that he doesn't believe will prevent him from making his next scheduled start.

"I really don't anticipate missing any time on this," Scherzer said during his postgame Zoom session with reporters, later adding: "It's not a major injury, or really a minor injury. At the end of the day, it's the old day-to-day thing."

We won't know for certain if that's actually true until Scherzer next pitches, perhaps against these same Mets on Tuesday at Citi Field. All we do know right now is that the team's best pitcher never looked right tonight.

Nor did the Nats lineup, which celebrated Juan Soto's delayed season debut with a tepid performance that included only five hits and zero baserunners after the fourth inning against Mets starter Rick Porcello and reliever Seth Lugo.

With that, they wound up splitting this quick, two-game series with their division rivals. The 4-5 Nationals now get another unnecessary day off before hosting the Orioles over the weekend.

They hoped to climb above the .500 mark tonight for the first time this season, but they took the field knowing there was a decent chance their ace would not be at his best.

Scherzer admitted he first experienced discomfort in his right hamstring prior to his last start against the Blue Jays. It didn't prevent him from tossing 7 1/3 scoreless innings on 112 pitches (most in the majors by any starter so far in 2020), so he didn't think it would be an issue after that.

But while running during his usual day-before-start workout Tuesday, he felt it again. Still, based on his success last time out, he believed he would be good to go tonight.

"I thought it was possible for me to pitch today and pitch 100 pitches," he said.

And after completing his warm-up tosses in the bullpen, Scherzer was reassured by catcher Kurt Suzuki and pitching coach Paul Menhart that everything looked fine. (Though the club had Fedde loosen up a bit before the game just in case.)

It's a good thing they did, because it was evident once Scherzer took the mound that he wasn't 100 percent. He walked Brandon Nimmo to open the game, then gave up a single to Michael Conforto to put himself in a quick jam. More concerning: His fastball velocity was down a few notches to 92-94, and he wasn't pitching with his usual max effort, seemingly unable to finish with full extension.

"I just couldn't quite 100 percent get into my right leg," he said. "I just couldn't sit all the way down and fire through it to the point where that's where you can make a full start. There's been plenty of times where I've taken the ball in my life where you don't feel 100 percent. You just take the ball, and somehow you find a way to get through the second, the third, the fourth and all of sudden pitching through the game. But that just wasn't going to happen tonight."

So after throwing only 12-of-27 pitches for strikes in the top of the first, allowing one run, Scherzer walked off the mound gingerly, and upon returning to the dugout had a conversation with the training and coaching staffs as Fedde immediately began warming up for real in the bullpen.

"He went out there, and he just couldn't really push off," manager Davey Martinez said. "That's what we noticed, and we talked to him, and I said: 'For the better, I think it's smart to get you out of there.'"

And so Martinez had no choice but to ask for eight innings from his bullpen, 24 hours after he needed four relief arms to record the final 10 outs of a 5-3 victory.

Fedde was up first, and though he hardly looked sharp himself - he needed a whopping 58 pitches to complete three innings - he did manage to allow only one run. Then came a parade of arms, one per inning, each asked to post a zero. Sam Freeman, Wander Suero and Kyle Finnegan were able to do it. Sean Doolittle was not.

Appearing for only the third time this season as he tries to fix his wayward mechanics, Doolittle again looked out of whack. His fastball stuck at 90-91 mph. His command was off. And three of the four batters he faced reached safely, including Dom Smith, whose RBI double off the center field wall extended the Mets' lead to 3-1 and knocked Doolittle out of the game for further soul searching.

Not that it mattered much how the bullpen fared, given the way the lineup struggled all night.

The Nationals got one quick run in the bottom of the first off Porcello when Adam Eaton and Soto each doubled, the latter in his first at-bat of the season. But that's just about all they got off Porcello, who got stronger (and more efficient) as the game progressed.

"He's got really good stuff," Soto said. "He just kept everybody off balance. We tried the most that we can to try to put him out of the game, but at the end of the day he just made his pitches and we just can't get it."

Porcello closed out his evening retiring 10 straight batters, pulled after the seventh despite throwing only 81 pitches. Lugo entered from the New York bullpen to pitch the eighth and quickly retired the side on six pitches.

Lugo was so effective he was able to come back for the ninth and close it out. The Nationals were left to stew not only over a loss in a winnable game but the potential loss of their ace only three starts into this short season.

"I'm really not concerned about this," Scherzer said. "I feel like this is going to heal up pretty soon. The only reason it creeped up more was because it happened yesterday. So here in a couple days, this should feel really good again."

Check back in a couple days to find out if he's right.