Scherzer fixes glitch, dominates, reaches strikeout milestone

Max Scherzer had to deal with an unusual injury - a strained ribcage muscle suffered when he dodged a foul ball in the dugout - and that alone made this a strange week and disrupted his typical preparation for Friday night's start against the Padres.

But Scherzer being Scherzer, there was a more important task at hand all week: Fix whatever it was that led to his ragged performance the last time he took the mound, when he was roughed up for seven runs and 11 hits by (of all teams) the Marlins.

Somehow, the Nationals ace managed to do just that, all while altering his throwing routine to account for the ribcage strain. And the end result of it: a dominant performance, albeit one that was lost to the late inning drama that succeeded it in the Nats' 4-3 loss to San Diego.

"You guys talked about making a couple little adjustments, and they showed out there," catcher Yan Gomes said. "He was competing his tail off. He did what he had to do, kept us in the ballgame and gave us a chance to win."

Scherzer did more than that. He pitched as well as he has all season, especially early on when he retired the first 13 batters he faced, with a fastball that topped out at 98 mph and a slider that baffled several hitters only six days after that same pitch was hammered by Miami's batters.sc

How'd he do it?

"I shortened up my arm action just a little bit," Scherzer explained. "And when I'm in a better slot, it allows me to really work through the ball a lot better. It affects every pitch. That's where I really felt like I was able to throw a good slider tonight and didn't really throw too many hanging sliders.

"So that was the good thing I was able to do over the past couple days: make that little fix, tweak it, and just go forward."

Scherzer's one real mistake in the game came to the 14th batter he faced. Up 0-2 in the count to Eric Hosmer, he tried to power a fastball up in the zone and get a swing-and-miss. The pitch, though, wasn't quite high enough, and Hosmer belted it to right-center field for a home run.

"It's probably the chess match. He was probably anticipating that I was going to do that, and he was probably looking for it," Scherzer said. "I drove the ball above the belt, where I kind of wanted it. He just did a better job of getting to it. So it's something you tip your hat, and move on."

Scherzer also gave up a run in the top of the seventh via Wil Myers' double and Manny Machado's RBI single up the middle. But that's all he surrendered on a night when he also reached an impressive career milestone.

Scherzer struck out 10 batters during his seven innings, but it was his seventh K of the night that earned a standing ovation from the crowd of 27,193. It was his 2,500th career strikeout, a mark previously achieved by only 34 pitchers, only two of whom (Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan) got there in fewer than Scherzer's 335 big league starts.

"It's really cool," he said. "It's stuff that you'll think about in the offseason a little bit more than you do now. Right now, you're just caught up in living it day-by-day, going through the season. But it's a cool milestone to reach. But I just know I've got a lot more in front of me, and I need to focus on pitching and what I'm going to do over the course of the rest of the season."

If Friday's start was a sign of things to come, Scherzer might just have more special moments in store.