Max Scherzer feels healthy and under control in first spring appearance

“The ankle’s been good. I’ve been getting through it. I can pitch at 100 percent on the ankle, so that’s the good news,” Scherzer said Friday after his first appearance of 2021, which was delayed — as you may have guessed — by a sprained left ankle. “I can get through the ball. So no worries on that end tonight.”

The plan was for Scherzer to throw two innings and between 30 and 35 pitches against the St. Louis Cardinals. He wound up tossing 38 before he was hooked with two outs in the second. In the coming days, as the regular season draws closer, Scherzer will see how his arm and ankle recover.

The 36-year-old is no stranger to dealing with minor injuries in February and March. The Nationals, though, are unfamiliar with how to ramp up pitchers after their arms have been started, then stopped, then started and stopped again in the past nine months.

It has made for an interesting experiment at Washington’s complex in West Palm Beach. Scherzer was the first expected starter to face another team. Left-hander Patrick Corbin is expected to take the mound Saturday against the Miami Marlins in Jupiter, Fla. Joe Ross will come next, according to Manager Dave Martinez, and Stephen Strasburg behind him.

Jon Lester, the club’s expected fourth starter, underwent surgery to remove his thyroid in New York on Friday morning. As of the midafternoon, Martinez had only heard that Lester was recovering, feeling well and waiting for a prognosis. The Nationals have floated using a six-man rotation in early April to curb any physical issues with their staff. That could put Scherzer, Strasburg, Corbin, Lester, Ross, Erick Fedde and Austin Voth in the mix for starts.

“If anything, spring training 2.0, you learned from that — like how can you ramp up quickly and stay healthy at the same time?” Scherzer said, referring to three weeks of training in July. “That was only just a handful of months ago. It reminded me of what that experiences is like, and I’ve taken it into this experience.”

Scherzer completed the first inning on 19 pitches and skipped around a one-out walk. He lost Matt Carpenter despite getting ahead 0-2. He struck out two — Tommy Edman looking, Paul DeJong swinging — and got Nolan Arenado to fly out to left. In the second, he walked leadoff batter Dylan Carlson, induced a weak grounder, yielded a sharp single and closed his outing with an infield fly.

The ace circled the mound while Martinez came to get him. The scattered, socially distanced crowd saw him off with a light cheer.

“Everything is fine on the arm,” Scherzer said when asked why he was more worried about his arm than ankle. “But when you progress through something like this, one little thing can lead to another little thing and then that can lead up to your arm. So I’m cognizant of that.”

Spring training parks can have finicky radar guns. That’s why, as Scherzer worked through the first, he topped out at 92 mph and was hovering around 88. His usual fastball velocity is in the mid-90s. By the third inning, when reliever Brad Hand made his spring debut for the Nationals, the numbers no longer flashed on the scoreboard.

After past spring setbacks and at this point of a long career, Scherzer knows how to prep for Opening Day. He is expected to be the Nationals’ starter against the New York Mets on April 1. He is still the hard-throwing, hard-charging right-hander that makes Washington tick. Somehow, entering the final season of a seven-year contract — the one signed with the understanding that he could slow down — that has yet to change.

But each year brings new complications. In 2019, he missed six weeks with a string of back and shoulder strains. That October, in the guts of the World Series, he was scratched from Game 5 with neck spasms and pitched three days later. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic kept all pitchers on maybe the wackiest schedules of their careers.

And now he’s back from a sprained ankle and easing toward full throttle. The process never ends.

“I was trying to be really under control tonight,” Scherzer said. “Get my pitches in and then really start to focus on dialing up the intensity in the starts after this.”