From no-hitter to no-win, Nats try to process gut-wrenching loss

MIAMI - When it was over, once they had a few minutes to let it sink in and let their understandably simmering emotions cool down a bit, the Nationals were left to ponder a simple question: How did that just happen?

How did the story of today's series finale at Marlins Park transform from Max Scherzer authoring what sure looked to everyone like the third no-hitter of his illustrious career into a 2-1 loss, in the blink of an eye?

Seriously, how did that just happen?

"I thought something could happen today, for sure," catcher Jose Lobaton said, confirming that players anticipate the same historic events fans do. "But baseball is like that. You can have a great day. He had a really good day. And then everything turned in one inning."

When Scherzer's career ends - and that won't be happening for some time, and not until he has authored plenty more historic starts - he most likely will remember this one. It will be hard to forget it.

Let's set the scene, for those who weren't able to watch this early Wednesday matinee. With one out in the bottom of the eighth, the Marlins had recorded precisely zero hits off Scherzer. Only two batters had reached base, on a first-inning walk and a second-inning hit-by-pitch. There had been no close calls, no diving plays in the field, no bang-bang calls at first base. Scherzer had 11 strikeouts, all of them on swings and misses, none looking.

He was going to do it. He was going to become the fifth pitcher in modern history to throw three no-hitters, joining an ultra-exclusive club that includes Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Cy Young and Bob Feller.

Even the opposition seemed to know it.

"Max was amazing today," Marlins catcher A.J. Ellis said. "He was electric."

Wouldn't you know Ellis would end up being the guy to break it up, though not exactly on a well-struck ball. No, the veteran backup catcher chopped a pitch back up the middle. Scherzer tried to reach up and snag it, but the ball only caught part of his glove - "I thought I had caught it," he said. "When I looked at it, it was empty." - and rolled toward Trea Turner. The shortstop couldn't get a handle on it himself, and so Ellis was safe at first on a play immediately ruled a clean hit by official scorer Ron Jernick.

Now, the entire complexion of the game had changed. The no-hitter was no longer in play. But there remained a 1-0 lead to protect, requiring a regrouping of emotions on the mound.

"Those type of plays happen," Scherzer said. "Obviously, you're frustrated. But you have to continue to move on. I hit the reset button."

Oliver Pérez and Blake Treinen quickly began to warm in the bullpen after the Ellis single, but Scherzer still seemed to have everything under control. He got JT Riddle to ground out to second, then got J.T. Realmuto to ground to short.
Inning over, 1-0 lead intact, right? Not exactly.

Turner's throw to first was low, and Adam Lind - playing first base to give Ryan Zimmerman a scheduled day off - couldn't make the pick. Lind was charged with the error, runners were on the corners and a visibly annoyed Scherzer had to walk back to the mound with his pitch count now at 114.

It raised a valid question: Why wasn't Zimmerman inserted for defense at some point late in the game, even though Baker's intention was to give him a true day off at the end of a long stretch in which the Nationals played 20 games in 20 days.

"Lind's one of our hottest bats, and his at-bat was coming up again in the ninth," Baker said. "Ordinarily in a game like that, you'd put your defense in. But when you've got another big bat coming up in the ninth, you don't want to take that bat out of the lineup."

At this point, things completely unraveled. Scherzer's next pitch hit Dee Gordon, and now the bases were loaded, with the fearsome Giancarlo Stanton stepping to the plate.

With Scherzer's pitch count at 115 and Treinen ready in the bullpen, Baker had to make his toughest call of the day. Maybe his toughest call of the season to date. He decided to stay with the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner.

"The thing about it is, it was his game," the 68-year-old manager said. "He was still throwing the ball great. And who could you bring in that was throwing better than him? That's how you've got to consider it. He worked 2 1/2 hours to get in that position. It started out with a cheap little infield hit, and then we had the error. It was different if they were hitting him around the ballpark, but they weren't."

Scherzer pays as much attention to his workload as anybody on the staff and insists he always lets his manager know precisely how much he has left in the tank, right down to the exact pitch count. He believed he still had enough left.

"I hadn't worked into trouble all day, hadn't had runners in scoring position," he said. "I wasn't aware of what the pitch count was ... 110, whatever it was. I still had bullets left. I still was able to go out there."

Scherzer got ahead in the count to Stanton, 1-2. He was one strike away from ending the inning, preserving the 1-0 lead and then handing over the ninth to the bullpen. But then came one of the rarest sights you'll ever witness from Scherzer: a 95 mph fastball straight to the backstop, beyond Lobaton's fully extended reach. Ellis raced home with the tying run, Realmuto and Gordon advanced into scoring position.

"He was running out of gas," Lobaton said. "But in that situation, you want him to be able to say how he feels. And he said that he got it. And I feel that is something good for the team, when you've got a pitcher that has got a lot of confidence. I know he was trying to do the best. But he was tired. How many pitches did he have?"

At that moment, he had 115, en route to a final total of 121, one shy of his highest mark since joining the Nationals in 2015.

"That's too many," Lobaton said. "But I love the way he competes in the game. He wants to win. He wanted that moment, and they gave it to him. It didn't go well, but I feel like in general he threw really well."

Scherzer still needed to finish off Stanton to keep the game tied, but he couldn't do that. He hung a 2-2 slider, and the big slugger lined the ball to left field. Ryan Raburn - a late substitution after Michael A. Taylor was scratched with an unspecified injury that left him unavailable to play in the game - came charging in and could only field the ball on a short hop.

"I think there's a play every time the ball's hit to me," Raburn said. "Until the ball tells me there's not, I'm going to try to catch it. But unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to it. We had a chance, just came up short."

Raburn did fire a strike home in time to nail Gordon and keep the deficit at 2-1, but the damage was done, with Scherzer finally succumbing to the workload.

"His stuff was there," Stanton said. "He was cruising. But it's gotta be taxing, going out there with those high numbers."

The Nationals went down quietly in the top of the ninth, and thus they found themselves trudging back to the clubhouse, trying to figure out how what moments earlier looked like the latest piece of Scherzer history had suddenly turned into the most agonizing loss of the year.

"That's a tough loss as a whole, as a team and for him," Raburn said. "But he pitched his tail off, gave us a chance. Just came up a little short."