Photo by Ed Delany of Metsmerized

In his second start of spring training, Max Scherzer breezed through a nine-pitch first inning against the Nationals. He then tossed a scoreless second inning, but a disastrous third inning derailed what looked to be a promising outing for the 38-year-old.

After Ildemaro Vargas singled, Scherzer attempted to quick-pitch Victor Robles on an 0-2 count, resulting in a balk. Speaking to reporters after his start, Scherzer expressed his confusion about why he was called for a balk.

“He calls time, I come set, I get the green light. I thought that was a clean pitch. He (Jeremy Riggs) said no. We got to figure out where the limit is,” Scherzer said.

After Robles ended up reaching on a Luis Guillorme error, Scherzer appeared to induce a double play from Riley Adams, but he was called for an automatic ball because he failed to start his pitching motion before the pitch clock expired.

“This is a good time to be testing these things,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said after the game. “Believe me, he (Scherzer) will come out of here with a really good idea of what you can and can’t do, and what is beneficial.”

After retiring Adams eventually, Scherzer allowed a run to score on a ground-out from CJ Abrams before Alex Call singled in Robles with the second run of the inning. Luis García followed by blasting a fastball over the berm in right field for a two-run homer, picking up right where he left off last year when he torched the Mets by going 17-for-43 with two homers against them.

Guillorme then committed another error, which was followed by a double by Jeimer Candelario. Scherzer’s day ended after Stone Garrett brought home a run on an infield single. David Griffin immediately surrendered back-to-back doubles to Vargas and Robles, allowing both inherited runners to score, leaving Scherzer with a very odd stat line:

2 2/3 innings pitched, five hits, seven runs (zero earned), no walks, one strikeout, 49 pitches (37 strikes).

“He felt good physically, he threw the ball well, (there were) a couple of bad hops on ground balls and the wind was a factor,” Showalter said of Scherzer’s overall performance.

Scherzer’s fastball sat around 93 miles per hour, topping out at 96.2. Other than García’s homer (105.7 MPH), the hard contact Scherzer allowed according to Statcast was Candelario’s double, which was measured at 98.1 MPH. The only other batted ball Scherzer allowed with an xBA over .500 was Call’s RBI single.

“I guess we took too much time in-between innings, I guess you have to the ball out by 30 seconds,” Scherzer said. “Hey, you know, find the worst of these rules now. I ran out the pitch clock. I got caught and I wasn’t trying anything on that, forgot about the time and seeing how the umpire called it, it was on 00 for one count. That’s one thing I also want to get cleaned up about the rules. If you look at a basketball clock when it goes 00, there’s still another second on 00 so we’ve got to make sure it’s not 00 the moment it hits 00 or is there a little time on 00. We need to get a little clarification on that moving forward. But that one was my mistake, I just didn’t keep track of time in that split second.”

While Scherzer’s line may have looked ugly, it wasn’t a terrible outing overall. He pounded the strike zone and didn’t allow a lot of loud contact. Considering that Showalter let him go a little deeper into this start, expect Scherzer to continue working deeper in his next appearance.