Facing the Detroit Tigers, his former team and the only one he’d never beaten, Scherzer fanned 20 batters, tying the major league record for most strikeouts in a nine-inning game.
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Scherzer allowed two home runs on the night, a third inning blast by Jose Iglesias, who hit his first of the season out to left on a first-pitch fastball, and a ninth inning home run by J.D. Martinez, who took the first pitch of the inning to left-center.
It’s a small one: Roger Clemens (who did it twice), Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson and, now, Scherzer.
Zimmermann, who entered the game with a league-best ERA of 1.10, yielded seven hits and three runs in seven innings.
“There’s something about 20 in the game, 20 strikeouts, 20 wins, those are huge numbers, and to be able to go out there tonight and accomplish one of those, that was a huge feat”.
The outing was Scherzer’s first against the Tigers, his former team. “I respect and admire how they go about their game”.
A one game losing streak. Scherzer has now beaten every major league team.
Jackie Bradley Jr. slugged two homers and drove in six runs in the Boston Red Sox’s 13-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics. Scherzer’s 33 swings-and-misses were the second most in the past 15 seasons (Clayton Kershaw had 35 in a game last September). That should come as no surprise, however: Martinez, who is notoriously hard to strike out, had whiffed just 11 times in 119 plate appearances before Wednesday’s game, and his 9.2% strikeout rate this season is tied with Melky Cabrera for the seventh-lowest mark in the majors. Scherzer struck out 17 last season in his second no-hitter of the year, against the Mets on October 3. Then he struck out Ian Kinsler, tying Bill Gullickson’s Nationals/Expos single-game record, setting a career high, and sending himself to the ninth with 106 pitches, and the heart of the Tigers order looming.
Zimmermann stumbled out of the gate, allowing a run on three hits in the first inning, but settled from there, allowing just a walk and a hit until the sixth inning, when Daniel Murphy broke a 1-1 tie with a RBI single. Perhaps more remarkably, Victor Martinez went three-for-four with no strikeouts against Scherzer.
“That was one of the more dominant performances I’ve ever come across”, said Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, also an opponent during Wood’s 20-strikeout game and one of the two compiled by Clemens.
Iglesias third inning home run was his first since July 17, 2015 off of Ubaldo Jimenez.
Scherzer fanned three in the second, third, and eighth.
GIANTS 5, BLUE JAYS 4, 13 innings (at San Francisco) – Buster Posey walked with the bases loaded in the 13th inning and the Giants salvaged one win in a three-game series with Toronto.
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Bismack Biyombo had 10 points for the Raptors, who can clinch their first conference finals berth with a win in Game 6 in Miami on Friday.
