In five seasons with the Detroit Tigers, Max Scherzer pitched well enough to make two All-Star teams, win the 2013 AL Cy Young Award and lead the league in wins in back-to-back seasons.
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In Atlanta, Williams Perez allowed only two hits and one run in eight innings.
His efforts tie Kerry Wood, Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson for the most in a 9-inning game, where there are only 27 outs to be made. Tom Cheney struck out 21 batters once on September 12, 1962 while playing for the Washington Senators but that’s a record of it’s own too because it took extra innings for him to accomplish that feat.
The 20 strikeouts tie a major league record for a nine inning game.
Cleveland used nine relievers after starter Danny Salazar was replaced after five innings.
“I believe the biggest difference between this outing and the one in Chicago is the fact that he was hitting his spots a lot better”, said Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos through team interpreter Octavio Martinez. The two that he did were the two home runs, really.
When Scherzer struck out the side in the eighth, he left the mound to a well-deserved and raucous standing ovation, an acknowledgement of the night’s mighty achievement: Scherzer had set both club and franchise records. Lorenzo Cain, who hit three homers Tuesday, laced a two-run single in the sixth and Kendrys Morales added a solo homer in the seventh. Stephen Strasburg had told him he had success throwing the powerful Tigers lineup high fastballs like those, so Scherzer kept that in the back of his mind as he progressed through the lineup.
“That’s some serious company”, Scherzer said.
Scherzer threw 119 pitches – 96 of them for strikes – and didn’t walk a batter.
“It’s like a horror film”, Detroit outfielder J.D. Martinez said after the game. “He’s one of those guys where, even when he misses, his stuff is still that good where he can get it by you”.
After Victor Martinez singled and Upton doubled with one out in the seventh, Scherzer got McCann looking and Anthony Gose swinging to escape.
It also put a charge into the crowd of 35,000-plus – the second largest in D.C. since Opening Day – that spent the majority of the last three innings on its feet, hanging on Scherzer’s every offering. If a hitter felt the change-up was coming, Scherzer had the 98-mph fastball.
Scherzer knew that facing the heart of the Tigers order with just a one-run lead would be a daunting task. In the two losses that drops to two.
“We won and those are 20 punchouts”, said Scherzer, when asked what was going through his mind when James McCann grounded into a force play to end the game.
Before last night, it was hard to imagine any pitcher in today’s game racking up 20 punch-outs in nine innings.
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“To be able to punch out 20”, Scherzer said after the 3-2 victory, “it’s sexy”.
