Ross on his outing, Baker and Maddux on Scherzer

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Joe Ross has a plan. He knows what he wants to work on in Grapefruit League games, and even when the results aren't so pleasant - like the back-to-back home runs he gave up in the first inning of the Nationals' 5-3 loss to the Red Sox on Tuesday - he isn't going to be deterred.

That's the beauty of spring training, when you can slide into a mechanical funk and then pull yourself out of it. Adds a whole new meaning to being a work in progress.

Ross acknowledged that he was "searching for mechanics a little bit" during his 2 2/3 innings today. He allowed two runs on three hits, waking one and fanning three. The home runs - two-out solo blasts by Mookie Betts and Hanley Ramírez - were a byproduct of getting out of sync, and he admitted the sluggers treated his mistakes like they should have.

"It was a little bit of everything today, honestly," Ross said. "I felt like a few, I was flying open. Wasn't quite getting quite all the way to my balance point, my load, on some of the pitches. I was kind of searching. I'm sure (there are) some things I'll be able to work on in some sides, some dry work in the bullpen, stuff like that. Discard some of the pitches today and keep moving towards the next outing."

As he did last spring, Ross is working on integrating a changeup into his repertoire. There's nothing wrong with being a sinker-slider pitcher, but throwing fewer sliders, Ross said, will take some of the pressure off his right arm. So will adding a four-seam fastball to the mix, and that's something he's also focusing on this spring.

"When you're working with two pitches, they can kind of see what you're doing. ... I think the changeup and the four-seamer are definitely going to be key attributes for deeper outings, hopefully," Ross said.

While Ross seemed self-critical, manager Dusty Baker was happy with what he saw from the right-hander. More than anything this spring, Baker wants to see Ross healthy, with no signs of the right shoulder inflammation that troubled him last season.

"I thought he threw the ball well, except he got out of sync a couple of times and then he found it back," Baker said. "He gave up a couple of solo homers to a couple of pretty good hitters. They've got a powerful lineup over there, but he fared pretty well."

Before Ross threw today, Baker got a close look at right-handers Max Scherzer and Joe Blanton. Both pitched live batting practice a couple of hours before the Grapefruit League game and impressed the manager.

How Scherzer performed was the most important development of the day, though Baker said he was surprised at how crisp Blanton was, considering he was only signed last week.

"He's behind, but he's not that far behind," Baker said of Blanton. "Very pleasantly surprised on how ready he came into camp. He should be right here pretty soon."

Scherzer's 44-pitch effort mimicked two innings, complete with warm-up pitches and inning breaks where Blanton took the hill. Baker was surprised at the level of Scherzer's command, given that a slow-healing fractured knuckle on his right ring finger has blunted how fully he can participate in camp thus far.

"Max was good," Baker said. "I was surprised at his command. His breaking ball was good, he threw some good changeups. He threw some pretty good and well-located fastballs, and that's his No. 1 pitch. Everything else is secondary."

Baker moved around to see if he could determine any difference in the fastballs Scherzer was throwing with a three-fingered grip - to protect the injured knuckle - and said he didn't see any.

"It looked the same," he said. "I couldn't tell if he was using three fingers and I was seeing if I could really see it on the ball. But his arm speed is such where you really can't pick it up. If that works for him - he's trying to find a way to make it work. Hopefully, soon his finger will be a hundred percent. Until then, we got to keep his arm ready and the only way we can keep it ready is by throwing. If he's got to throw with three fingers, then that's what he's going to do."

Pitching coach Mike Maddux noted that there wasn't a lot of contact from the six minor leaguers taking their hacks against Scherzer on Field 1.

"The ball was coming out clean," Maddux said. "The hitters had a tough time with his fastball. It had life on it, late action, good finish. Curveball had good shape. Changeup was good, slider was good, all five of his pitches worked. I liked that I saw."

On Wednesday, Maddux will check on how Scherzer is feeling after his most demanding workout of the spring, then confab with Baker to determine an appropriate next step. Baker seemed to hint that a simulated game could be the next in a progression of tests for Scherzer. The key, the manager said, is building up Scherzer's workload so that he can contribute fully, not just be half a pitcher getting in shape during the regular season and taxing a bullpen in the process.

"It's a matter of endurance and how deep, hopefully, he can go in the game," Baker said. "He's one of the guys you're counting on saving your bullpen. You hope he can get his pitch count up, you hope he can go (deep). That was his first outing, he went two innings. He's a starter and he's at the same place everybody else was a couple of weeks ago. You certainly don't want Max to be a five-, six-inning pitcher. We're counting on him to save our bullpen. No, we're just going to go on performance and how he feels and realize we have a lot of season to go."

Maddux said the Nationals will need to be careful of pushing Scherzer too much and too hard while he's still recovering.

"We got to go by feel," he said. "We don't want to accelerate it too much and we got to treat it like a spring training, just starting late. Most of the guys get six outings. That's kind of what we do."

But is there enough time for Scherzer to do that in the next three weeks of spring training?

"You got to do it to build up just like everybody else goes two, three, four, five, six and back to four on the last one is kind of what we do," Maddux said. "But in his case, we'd go two, three, four, five, and there'd be no back down. We'd continue to build. We'll see how many starts we can get out of him. And like I said, we'll know more moving forward."

Maddux remains intrigued about Scherzer's three-fingered grip and how quickly the righty has taken to it.

"I've seen guys do it, but they did it because it was always how they did it," Maddux said. "Max was playing catch and he was long tossing everything with it and he was fine. Arm felt great. I watched him play catch and he was airing it out and I'm like, 'Damn, arm looks good.' Then we got on the mound and did it and it was like he had done it his whole life. I mean, looked fine. Looks good."

Now Maddux wonders whether Scherzer is playing the role of trendsetter.

"Well, if Max goes out there and runs the table like he's capable of doing, you might see more guys toying with it," Maddux said. "It might be a hell of an idea.