Max Scherzer and the Nationals overcome a howling wind to end their homestand on a high
But asked to share some advice Wednesday, when wind whipped the air for nine straight innings, Martinez had just an old bit of wisdom: “Don’t take your eye off the ball.”
His team and the St. Louis Cardinals could have used more than that. The fans could have, too, sitting spaced apart while bundled in blankets and hats at Nationals Park. Yet wind was the workplace hazard of the Nationals’ 1-0 victory over the Cardinals. It blew left to right without stopping. It made Max Scherzer, the Nationals’ ace, spend a good portion of his start huffing hot breath on his fingers. If it didn’t tilt the scoreboard, it did turn the experience into a tunnel of cold gusts and doubt.
Fielders did a little extra shuffling under each pop fly. In each dugout, hands stayed stuffed in sweatshirt pockets. And the Nationals (7-9), the team that built its park on the Anacostia River, won a three-game series before heading to play the New York Mets and Toronto Blue Jays on the road.
“My hands were really dry. Cold and dry is how I’d describe what I felt like,” Scherzer said. “I had to really be creative and find ways to kind of feel that baseball. I feel like my forearms are even a little bit sore from having to grip the ball so hard.”
Scherzer, to his credit, mixed nine strikeouts into six scoreless innings (and has now tossed 17 scoreless going back to April 11). He threw 109 pitches, his most of the year, and was dominant after stranding the bases loaded in the first. Catcher Alex Avila put Washington ahead for good with an RBI double off Cardinals starter Carlos Martínez in the second. Josh Bell, who is not the fastest runner — or the next-fastest runner, for that matter — chugged home from first, his dash aided by an errant throw from left fielder Justin Williams to the cut-off man. Then, after Scherzer exited, relievers Tanner Rainey, Daniel Hudson and Hand held on.
The Nationals needed 168 pitches to blank the Cardinals (8-10). Hudson needed 31 of them to escape an eighth-inning jam of his making. The truth, as shown before Matt Carpenter lined out into the wind to end the threat, is that baseball is hard enough. It doesn’t need elements to challenge. It doesn’t need Mother Nature to twist limbs and brains into a knot. Just ask these Nationals for an accounting of outside influences. Or maybe ask for the abridged version.
They began the year with a coronavirus outbreak that postponed four games and put nine players on the injured list. The group included (but was not limited to) both of their catchers, their new first baseman, their starting second baseman, their starting left fielder, their third and fourth starters and their closer. They still had to face the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. Expectedly, they started 1-5.
But even once most of the nine returned, the team hit bad luck and its own poor performance. As of this past weekend, star pitcher Stephen Strasburg is on the 10-day IL with right shoulder inflammation. As of Tuesday evening, star right fielder Juan Soto is on the 10-day IL with a strained left shoulder. Add reliever Wander Suero and his strained left oblique. A string of bad outings from the rotation — from Strasburg, Joe Ross and Patrick Corbin, who then rebounded Tuesday — has taxed the bullpen. A carousel of arms has rotated between Washington and the club’s alternate site in Fredericksburg, Va.
At times, April has felt like August. That’s the nature of early holes.
“We’ve had a lot thrown at us the first couple weeks of the season,” Hudson said. “Guys are battling.”
So some wind? It was nothing. Well, nothing aside from constant and nagging while Scherzer lifted the Nationals past the Cardinals. He hit leadoff batter Tommy Edman with a fastball, yielded an infield single and walked Paul DeJong to put three on in the first, when the temperature was a misleading 53 degrees. But he struck out the next two, Dylan Carlson and Carpenter, to settle right in.
He would retire 12 of his final 13 batters. He passed Mike Mussina on MLB’s all-time strikeout list, now sitting 21st with 2,817. Yet Martínez mostly matched him, clean frame for clean frame, save Avila’s double in the second. Martínez pushed to 91 pitches in six innings. Scherzer used his six to drop his ERA to 1.80, and his WHIP — walks and hits per inning pitched — to 0.72.
“With the conditions, it was kind of tough for guys to get a feel for their breaking pitches and their off-speed stuff,” Avila said, making Scherzer’s outing more impressive. “Just the dryness of the air, the cold weather, even Max was having trouble on his slider at times. And that was with Rainey, Huddy and Brad as well; everyone had the same kind of issues.”
Rainey was tagged with a game-tying triple in the Nationals’ 3-2 win Tuesday. Hudson and Hand finished it out. All were called on again, and Rainey, already in his seventh appearance, struck out two before catcher Andrew Knizner poked a soft liner to right-center.
Center fielder Victor Robles coasted to it, then sped up, then realized the wind pushed the ball from his reach, if only by a shivering arm’s length. Knizner sped by first and dug an extra 90 feet on the miscue. It seemed, in that moment, that the wind could put a tiny imprint on the action. But Rainey responded to down Austin Dean with a biting slider. Dean and the weather were no match.
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