Gleyber Torres delivers pair of clutch hits in a walk-off victory over the Nationals.
Late rally comes after 14-strikeout day by Scherzer
The smallest of hits decided a huge pitching matchup.
Max Scherzer overwhelmed batters to dominate a Cy Young Awardwinning duel with Corey Kluber, reaching doubledigit strikeouts for the 100th time.
After striking out three times against Scherzer, Gleyber Torres blooped a tying single in the ninth inning and won the game with a 50-foot single into a five-man infield that gave the New York Yankees a thrilling 4-3 win over the Washington Nationals on Saturday.
“Especially with the five-man infield, you don’t usually expect to see an infield single like that to win a ballgame,” Aaron Judge said. “But Gleyber’s been hitting the ball — he’ll hit it right at somebody 110 mph and it’s an out, and sure enough he had two hits today that were 50, 60 mph off the bat — if that. That’s the crazy game we play.”
Scherzer, coming off a five-hitter that beat Miami at home last Sunday and the birth of son Derek Alexander less than two hours after the final pitch, struck out 14 in 71⁄3 innings, allowed two hits and walked one.
Scherzer joined Nolan Ryan (215), Randy Johnson (212), Roger Clemens (110) and Pedro Martinez (108) as the only pitchers to strike out 10 or more at least 100 times.
“It’s pretty cool to join the club,” Scherzer said, “but it’s tough for me to really put that in perspective. I think that’s more for other people, the other pitchers that pitched before me and obviously guys after me.”
In a matchup totaling five Cy Youngs, Washington built a 2-1 lead against Kluber on Juan Soto’s bases-loaded walk in the third and Starlin Castro’s single in the sixth that followed Kyle Schwarber’s double.
Kyle Higashioka’s home run on a hanging slider had tied the score at 1 in the third.
Closer Brad Hand walked DJ Lemahieu leading off the ninth, Judge hit an opposite-field single to right and Torres followed with bloop single to right that tied it 2-all.
Victor Robles’ leadoff single against Aroldis Chapman and Trea Turner’s sacrifice fly scored the automatic runner to put Washington ahead 3-2 in the 10th.
Mike Ford, in a 1-for-23 slide, fouled off a bunt attempt, then hit an opposite-field single to left to
drive in the automatic runner leading off the bottom half to even it 3-3 against Hand.
Justin Wilson (1-0) struck out two in a perfect 11th. With automatic runner Lemahieu on second to start the bottom half, Tanner Rainey (0-2) walked Giancarlo Stanton on a full count and Judge on four pitches.
Washington went to a five-man infield with three on the left side, inserting Jordy Mercer to the infield in place of Schwarber, the left fielder. With a 1-2 count, Torres tapped a slider off the end of his bat, a slow hopper between the mound and third.
Rainey reached for it with his bare hand, and it bounced off as he approached the foul line.