Hey, not sure if you’ve heard, but 2015 has been a pretty lousy season for the Washington Nationals.
OK, that’s an understatement. More like an “epically disappointing” season. Or “colossally horrendous.” Or, well, you get the idea.
This was a team that was supposed to run away with the National League East and streak through the postseason. Instead, it’s crumbled in a heap of injury, inconsistency and infighting, and the Nats will be watching the playoffs from their La-Z-Boys.
There has been one bright spot in Washington’s lost campaign, however—one move that has paid serious dividends. That would be the signing of Max Scherzer, who reminded the world Saturday why he’s one of the very best pitchers on the planet.
For nine brilliant innings at Citi Field, Scherzer befuddled and downright dominated the New York Mets, the club that streaked past Washington in the second half to claim the division flag.
The historically huge piece of Scherzer’s final line is obviously the hit total, as in the zero he surrendered. The 2-0 win makes two no-hitters this year for the 31-year-old right-hander. And it makes him the first pitcher since Nolan Ryan in 1973 to log a pair of no-nos in a single regular season, per B/R Insights.
Equally impressive, though, were the career-high 17 strikeouts Scherzer recorded, including nine of the final 10 batters he faced.
It was, by any measure, a transcendent appearance, the kind that separates very good pitchers from the truly great.
After the game, Scherzer described what it’s like to get locked into such an otherworldly zone.
“You’re in sync with your mechanics, and you’re in sync with the catcher and what you want to do,” he said, per Bill Ladson and Anthony DiComo of MLB.com. “You have a feeling what the out pitch is, and you’re reading swings, reading what they’re doing and just trying to execute pitches around that.”
With that exclamation point, Scherzer finished his first go-around in a Nationals uniform, with a 2.79 ERA and 276 strikeouts in 228.2 innings pitched. He won’t win the NL Cy Young Award—not with the numbers the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ Zack Greinke and Chicago Cubs‘ Jake Arrieta are putting up.
But if there were any doubt he’s an ace among aces, Scherzer laid them to rest.
So put the seven-year, $210 million deal the Nationals handed Scherzer this winter in the franchise win column. Even if Scherzer falters near the end of the contract, he’s shown he’s worth every penny.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t erase the sting of other moves that didn’t pan out, to put it kindly.
Take the sad saga surrounding manager Matt Williams, who lost control to the point where players were openly griping to reporters, with one unnamed Nat telling Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post the clubhouse was “a terrible environment.”
CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman reported Thursday that Washington will fire Williams, but it’s worth asking why the manager stuck around that long. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, it would have behooved the Nats to go with a different skipper from the get-go.
“He’s a nice man, and he tried hard,” Heyman wrote, “but he probably was miscast as a first-time manager with a team toting huge expectations.”
Then there was a rash of terrible injury luck, which saw Denard Span, Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon, Doug Fister, Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman make trips to the disabled list. And others, including shortstop Ian Desmond, significantly underperformed.
Finally and most explosively, there was the trade-deadline move to bring in Jonathan Papelbon. The veteran closer was supposed to shore up the Nats’ bullpen, but instead he solidified his reputation as a classless malcontent with the Bryce Harper choking incident that will serve as the definitive symbol of Washington’s crash-and-burn season.
That’s too bad, because Scherzer’s pair of no-hit gems deserve the honor. Among all the dashed expectations and ugly incidents, here is a man at the top of his game doing incredible things with a baseball.
In a perfect world, that’s what we would focus on.
And even in the Nationals’ decidedly imperfect world, Scherzer represents hope.
Really, there are other causes for optimism in the nation’s capital. There’s an enviable offensive nucleus of Harper, Rendon and young talent such as Trea Turner. And there’s Strasburg, who has finished his up-and-down, injury-riddled season on a strong note and joins Scherzer to form a potent top-of-the-rotation duo heading into 2016, with top prospect Lucas Giolito in the pipeline.
Nats fans will slog into the long, cold winter with a nasty taste in their mouths. But here’s a possible remedy: Re-watch Scherzer’s no-hitters, rinse and repeat—because, in a season where almost everything went wrong, Scherzer is one thing that went very, very right.
All statistics current as of Oct. 3 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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