On Wednesday night, Scherzer faced his former team for the first time and it turned out to be anything but “just another game”.
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His mission had been accomplished. He threw 119 pitches during the complete game.
“I knew there was a lot”, manager Dusty Baker said.
The performance adds to two no-hitters last season and a 2013 AL Cy Young Award that help make a resume ready for Cooperstown should Scherzer continue at a similar pace for the next decade or so.
“That is some serious company”. “It won’t sink in right now”. “It is an incredible accomplishment”.
He got the win, all right. Murphy was 3-4 in the game increasing his batting average to a major league leading.409.
Scherzer joined Roger Clemens (twice), Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson as the only players to strike out 20 batters in a contest, also breaking Bill Gullickson’s Montreal Expos/Nationals single-game franchise record of 18 strikeouts (1980), per Sportsnet Stats. “To strike out 20, that’s sexy”. “They’d have walked him”, Ausmus explained. “He was dominant out of the gate”. Victor Martinez singled to put the tying run on base.
And he did, but it didn’t come without his breathing room eliminated. Five Tigers – Ian Kinsler, J.D. Martinez, Miguel Cabrera, James McCann and Anthony Gose – struck out three times each.
But while the early noise was made for Zimmermann, the late noise was made for Scherzer, who elevated his game in the top of the seventh inning, after Justin Upton doubled off the center-field fence to put runners on second and third with one out. It’s a feat so rare that pitching a ideal game, turning an unassisted triple play, and hitting four home runs in a single game all have occurred with a greater frequency.
Listen to a montage of all 20 strikeouts below.
“He was just different”. “He got 20 strikeouts”. “That’s special. How many times they do in the big leagues?” After the game, he spoke about being caught on TV, yelling what he described as “a couple choice words” at the umpire: “I think the only person that’s pretty upset that saw it is my mom”.
“Well that’s as good as I’ve seen him and I had him for a year in Detroit”. Needing strikeouts more than ever before Wednesday evening, Scherzer struck out catcher McCann looking at a fastball.
Then came Victor Martinez, the lone holdout against Scherzer’s strikeouts. Scherzer, on the other hand, pounded the zone (or at least its very near proximity) on the vast majority of his pitches, yet hitters still couldn’t intercept the baseball. “There’s a reason that guy gets $210 million dollars”.
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Scherzer (4-2) did not walk a batter on yet another magical night for the Washington ace. “It wasn’t quite as dominant as Kerry Wood and it was more dominant than Clemens”. In his last outing, Scherzer was pounded for seven runs in five innings against the Cubs, and his start against the Tigers was just his fifth quality start in eight tries. He had done his research.
