Scherzer starts, finishes strong in blowout at Fenway (updated)

For a guy who firmly believes a start is defined by the last 10 to 15 pitches he throws, Max Scherzer was not satisfied with his two previous outings this summer. In each case, an otherwise strong start ended on a sour note, with the Nationals ace surrendering four late runs to fritter away what seemed like a comfortable lead.

So when he walked off the mound at fabled Fenway Park tonight, having just put a definitive stamp on a classic Scherzer pitching performance, the three-time Cy Young Award winner couldn't have felt anything but full satisfaction.

"I know I can finish strong at the end," he said during a postgame Zoom session with reporters after leading the Nationals to a comfortable 10-2 victory over the Red Sox. "I train. I do everything I can. The fact I haven't been able to do it is ... I just didn't get the job done. But I always know that I can."

Handed another early lead by a lineup that both battered and cleared the Green Monster with authority, Scherzer didn't give the Red Sox any reason to believe they could storm back. With six innings of 11-strikeout ball, he led the way as the Nationals snapped a three-game losing streak and took the opener of a weekend series between baseball's last two World Series champions.

"Sometimes he gets out and he's overamped, he just wants to blow guys away," manager Davey Martinez said. "Tonight, he had a sense of calmness that I've see before. He definitely had that."

Scherzer allowed one run on back-to-back, two-out hits in the third, but otherwise dominated Boston's lineup. And in doing so, he joined some awfully elite company.

With his 97th career 10-strikeout game, Scherzer tied Sandy Koufax for fifth place on the all-time list. (And the former has thrown only three more career innings than the latter.)

"I'm flattered," Scherzer said upon learning that news. "I didn't go into tonight even thinking about that. So when you mention that ... the fact that you can even mention me in the same breath as him is an honor."

The bulk of those double-digit strikeout games have come since Scherzer signed with the Nationals in 2015. He has now struck out 10 or more batters in 72 of his 165 starts for Washington, nearly 44 percent of them. Even more remarkable: This was the 20th time he has struck out 10 or more batters with zero walks for the Nats, more than 12 percent of his starts here.

As a true student of the game, Scherzer appreciates all of that. But the competitor in him had to most appreciate the way he mowed through the heart of the Red Sox lineup in the bottom of the sixth, striking out J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts to close out 92-pitch evening in style.

The biggest key to his sustained success tonight, Scherzer admitted afterward, was a small tweak he made in the last week. After noticing his hands were lower than normal in previous starts, he made a point to raise them higher, which allowed his shoulders to be more square.

"I felt like I was in a better direction tonight," he said. "And that really allowed me to be able to execute high fastballs with a lot more ease tonight. I didn't have to try to drive the ball up. I was able to naturally throw the fastball up."

It also helped that Scherzer had the luxury of pitching with a lead all night. His teammates ensured that with a five-run explosion in the top of the third against Red Sox left-hander Martín Pérez that featured five extra-base hits in the span of six batters.

Victor Robles got the rally started with a one-out double to left. Trea Turner followed with his own double down the left field line, this one scoring two runs and extending his hitting streak to 13 games.

Then came back-to-back blasts by Juan Soto and Howie Kendrick, Soto launching a 3-0 changeup from Pérez over the right field wall while Kendrick lofted another changeup over the Green Monster and off the shoulder of an unsuspecting cardboard cutout fan.

Two batters later, Kurt Suzuki thought he had duplicated Kendrick's feat, only to watch as his deep drive struck the 37-foot-high wall and came back into play for a double. (Suzuki would do it again in the sixth, somehow hitting a ball 391 feet, but settling for a single.)

It was the kind of sustained rally the Nationals have shown they're capable of producing, just not as regularly as they'd like.

"I think it's just swinging at good pitches," Turner said. "I think we've got a bunch of competitors, like we always do. Each and every year, we have a deep lineup. We have guys that can put at-bats together. I feel like those innings are just laying off bad pitches and getting into good counts. And then hitting the ball the other way, moving runners, doing different things, running the bases correctly."

Speaking of running the bases correctly: The Nats stole a run in the fourth when Turner semi-intentionally got hung up between first and second and avoided getting tagged until after Robles scampered home from third. They then added on when Michael A. Taylor hustled down the line to beat Bogaerts' great throw (overturned thanks to replay review) and allow Suzuki to score in the sixth. And Josh Harrison produced a two-run homer to center in the eighth to cap a big night at the plate on a night when their ace was also at his best.

"He's a competitor, man," said Harrison, who made the final out of Scherzer's 2015 no-hitter against the Pirates. "Works on his craft. Anytime you take the ball on that mound, you have to have some type of bulldog in you, and he definitely displays that. You've got an arsenal he does, I think that makes him that much better. Confidence is a lot in this game, and you can tell he has a lot of it."