Max Scherzer gave up four solo home runs over the first three innings in his 2021 debut, but the three-time Cy Young award-winner settled in after that, and ended up retiring the final ten batters he faced as the Nationals rallied to tie things up at 4-4 in the series opener in the nation’s capital.
It was a 5-4 game in the eighth, when Andrew Stevenson hit a one-hop grounder to third in a bases-loaded at bat and reached first safely when it bounced off Austin Riley’s glove, and the tying run came in, 5-5, before the Nationals won it in the bottom of the ninth on a walk-off single by Juan Soto off his arch nemesis, Will Smith, 6-5 final in D.