The last time Max Scherzer was in a game that counted, he delivered one of the best performances in the history of baseball. No pressure Monday afternoon when he walks onto the mound at Turner Field in Atlanta.
Scherzer will be the Washington Nationals’ opening day starter for the second consecutive season, further entrenching his growing influence on the organization. His last regular-season outing was Oct. 3, 2015 against the New York Mets. Scherzer threw the the second no-hitter of the season. He struck out 17 batters. By using a metric called “Game score,” created by noted statistician Bill James, Scherzer’s outing to close last season was the second-best nine-inning game in Major League Baseball history. He has joked there will be no no-hitter on opening day.
Scherzer’s first season with the Nationals capped a personal four-year surge. Since 2012, Scherzer’s innings pitched and strikeout totals have increased each season. Last year, he finished second in the National League with 275 strikeouts. Meanwhile, his ERA and WHIP have dipped. In 2015, both were career lows. His command was supreme.
“It was a career-high in first-pitch strikes and a career-low in walks,” Scherzer said. “I had that consistency of being able to throw a strike whenever I needed to.”
He’s back at his usual playing weight of around 210 pounds. During the offseason, he was biking a lot because of his dogs. The Scherzers’ two shepherd mixes were trained to run without leashes, so they would follow Scherzer during his bike rides, then hassle him for another on days he might not want to go.
Scherzer has also worked to understand when he may have to use his pitches differently this season. For instance, increasing the use of his cutter or throwing his curveball in different situations than last year.
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Now that spring training is over, Scherzer has been able to spend more time with new pitching coach Mike Maddux. One of Maddux’s pet phrases is that the staff needs to be filled with pitch makers, not pitch throwers. This dialed-in mantra feeds right into Scherzer’s structured approach to the game, which he supplements with rollicking emotion.
“What makes him unique out of any of the pitching coaches I’ve had in my career [is] that he really talks to us about the mental side of the game and the fine tuning of what it takes to try to be as successful as possible,” Scherzer said. “It’s been a joy for me to actually have somebody with that type of intellect, to be able to articulate different things of when you’re in different situations, understand that, ’Hey, you’re the guy with the ball. They’re in trouble; not you.’ And always put into perspective and the place of the right mindset, because so many times when you’re out there on the mound, you can run yourself into a little rabbit hole when you start thinking the world’s collapsing on you. And he does a good job of identifying those situations and saying, ’Actually, no, you’re in control.’”
Scherzer’s opening day start was expected, but the Nationals have tweaked the rotation behind him to begin the season. Because of a day off between games, Stephen Strasburg will pitch the second game of the year on Wednesday. While in Atlanta, manager Dusty Baker will determine who is throwing Thursday’s home opener. When the rotation swings back around, the Nationals expect to slot left-hander Gio Gonzalez in between the right-handed Scherzer and Strasburg.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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