Scherzer labors through short start in loss to Braves (updated)

ATLANTA - It was muggy at SunTrust Park tonight, no question about that. Muggy enough to cause Max Scherzer to sweat straight through his jersey and cap in only two innings? Yes.

Still, the way he labored and looked as exhausted as he's ever going to look on a baseball diamond, it seemed fair to wonder if Scherzer was dealing with something else, if he simply wasn't feeling as well as he needed to feel to pitch in a big league game on a muggy Friday night.

"Just the conditions," Scherzer insisted after a four-inning start in which he allowed six runs and threw a staggering 102 pitches, perhaps dealing a serious blow to his chances for a fourth Cy Young Award.

Thanks to their relentless offensive attack against Scherzer, the Braves were able to open up an early lead on the Nationals and walk away with a 10-5 victory to move one step closer to a surprise National League East title.

The loss leaves the Nats a season-high 9 1/2 games back in the division with only 14 left to play. With two more games to play against the NL East leaders this weekend, they could leave town on the brink of elimination.

In a star-studded series opener that also featured plenty of highlights from Rookie of the Year candidates Juan Soto (homer, walk) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (four hits, including a triple and a double), it was the Cy Young contender who didn't help his cause.

Every pitcher is going to have to battle through some high-stress innings in every start, but Scherzer was in high-stress mode basically the entire time he was on the mound tonight. Acuña led off the bottom of the first with a double to right-center, and so Scherzer had to retire three straight batters with a runner in scoring position to escape the jam.

Turns out that was the only jam he escaped. Scherzer had a chance to get out of the second inning unscathed, but when he walked opposing pitcher Kevin Gausman with two outs, he left the bases loaded for Acuña. His cap soaked all the way through and dripping with sweat, Scherzer got the count full against the rookie sensation but then watched as Acuña blooped a 3-2 slider into shallow right field for a two-run single. (Moments later, he went to the dugout and swapped out his cap for a dry one.)

"I just didn't change my hat between the innings, something that I should've done," he said. "I know the type of game I was in. I just forgot to change my hat in between innings."

Scherzer, who also changed jerseys between innings, again was one pitch away from escaping a jam in the third but proceeded to surrender a two-out, two-run single to Tyler Flowers off a diving Anthony Rendon's glove at third base.

And when Acuña tripled with one out in the fourth - leaving him a home run shy of the cycle before the game was halfway complete - Scherzer yet again found himself trying to get out of a troublesome situation. He wound up allowing two more runs (via Freddie Freeman's sacrifice fly and Nick Markakis' two-out RBI single) but he might have prevented the second run from scoring had Bryce Harper not tried to throw all the way to the plate on the sac fly, allowing the trailing runner to take second base (and ultimately score on the Markakis single).

His pitch count already at 102 after four innings, Scherzer's night was over. Of the 23 batters he faced, 13 stepped to the plate with at least one runner in scoring position. It was perhaps as high-stress a start as Scherzer has had since joining the Nationals.

"Mentally, I could execute those pitches," he said. "I just couldn't get into a rhythm where I knew where those balls were actually going to end up. I couldn't control my misses. It's not even so much that the runners in scoring position were a factor. It's just I was pitching out of the stretch so much. I never found a rhythm out of the windup to be able to take it to the stretch to be able to execute clean innings."

Scherzer's teammates did do their part to try to get him off the hook for the loss. They scored twice in the second and twice more in the fourth off Gausman, getting production from the bottom half of the lineup.

Matt Wieters and Wilmer Difo each drove in runs in the top of the second via productive outs. Then Soto made his biggest statement of the night in his rookie battle with Acuna, leading off the fourth with a homer to left-center. It was Soto's 20th home run of the season, and it leaves him only two shy of Harper and four shy of Tony Conigliaro on the list of all-time homers by a teenager.

"When the season start, I say: 'God, please I want 15 homers,' " Soto said. "Now I have 20. That feels pretty good."

Difo's double off the right-center field wall later in the inning brought home another run and briefly left the game tied 4-4, but Scherzer couldn't keep it tied for long. And the Nationals bullpen couldn't keep it close. That group have up four tack-on runs, three of them coming in the bottom of the eighth to put the game out of reach.

At the end of the night, though, it was tough not to focus primarily on the man who started the game. He's arguably the best pitcher in the majors, but he didn't look it tonight.

"Let it go," manager Davey Martinez said. "Max could be out there in five days and do his thing again, I'm sure."