Ankle sprain behind him, Scherzer gets back to work

Max Scherzer has dealt with sprained ankles before. Both his left and his right, actually. So when it happened about four weeks ago and briefly delayed his spring training debut, the Nationals ace wasn't particularly worried about that.

No, what Scherzer was more worried about was a sprained left ankle setting off a chain of events that might lead to an injured right arm.

"When you progress through something like this, one little thing can lead to another little thing, and that can lead up to your arm," he said during a Zoom session with reporters following his 38-pitch start tonight in West Palm Beach, Fla. "So I'm cognizant of that. I'm more worried about something happening to my arm than really to my ankle."

In that regard, everything tonight went perfectly smooth. Scherzer might not have been as crisp as he would've liked - he was charged with two runs after departing with two outs in the second and two runners on base - but that wasn't the primary goal against the Cardinals. The goal was to get through the start healthy, and to start getting a feel for his pitches in the first of what should be five exhibition starts before opening night.

"At this stage in the ballgame, you've got to be careful of anything, creating any little injuries that could become big injuries," he said. "I felt like I was able to avoid anything tonight. Just go out there, get my work in and worry about getting the intensity later."

Anyone who has ever watched Scherzer pitch probably can't imagine the three-time Cy Young Award winner not pitching with intensity. It's his hallmark, and it's among the reasons he's got a spot in Cooperstown reserved for him some day down the road.

But Scherzer has been doing this long enough to know how to get himself ready for the games that actually count. And tonight's game - which ended as a 7-6 Nats victory over the Cardinals thanks to a walk-off throwing error on an attempted steal - most definitely did not count. If anyone knows that, it's the 36-year-old pitcher in his 14th spring training.

"You have to be smart, and he's one of the best at knowing his body and knows when to start putting the pedal down," said Alex Avila, who caught Scherzer for the first time since they were teammates in Detroit from 2010-14. "We'll see that toward the end of spring."

Results-wise, there was some good and some bad tonight. The good: Scherzer struck out a pair and threw first-pitch strikes to seven of the eight St. Louis batters he faced. The bad: He walked a pair, each time after getting ahead 0-2, and his pitch count got high enough that manager Davey Martinez needed to pull him with two outs in the top of the second.

Scherzer's primary goal tonight may have been to get through the start healthy and build his arm up for his next outing. But this isn't someone who can disregard the art of pitching altogether when he steps on the mound.

So there were other objectives, most notably an attempt to see how some altered mechanics affected Scherzer's arm slot. His assessment of that?

"I checked a little video, and there were some pitches I threw that I thought were really good, where I was hitting the right spot, and there were other times that I was climbing out of it," he said. "But that's kind of expected. You kind of know you're going to have some good ones and you're going to have some bad ones."

"He's so mechanics-driven," Martinez said. "He really focuses this time of year on honing in on his mechanics. I think it helps his arm. That's what we looked for with him, and he was really good tonight."

Tonight also presented an opportunity for Scherzer and Avila to get reacquainted. Nobody has caught more Scherzer starts in the big leagues than Avila (107 times), but it had been seven years since the two were teammates.

When they got to work tonight in the bullpen prior to the game, it all started coming back.

"I wouldn't say it was like riding a bike, because it's been a little while," said Avila, who also clubbed a three-run homer in the bottom of the first. "But definitely some flashbacks in those moments in the bullpen, and then also in the dugout between innings. It's just kind of getting back to the conversations we'd have between innings, and kind of get into that flow and that rhythm. It's going to take a few starts, but I think today was a good first step."