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The weekend showdown between the first-place Dodgers and the first-place Nationals ends on Sunday with one of the best pitching matchups of the season. Zack Greinke gets the start for the Dodgers, with Max Scherzer on the mound for Washington.
Greinke leads baseball with a 1.39 ERA. Scherzer is third at 2.114, an iota behind the 2.112 mark by A.J. Burnett.
Greinke leads baseball with nine starts of at least seven innings allowing zero or one run. Scherzer is tied for second (with Jake Arrieta) with eight.
Scherzer lasted 4⅔ innings on July 7, the only time in 18 starts this season he didn't last at least six innings. His 14 starts of at least seven innings are two more than anyone else in baseball (Felix Hernandez has 12).
Greinke has lasted at least six innings in all 18 of his starts, the longest streak by a Dodgers pitcher to start a season since Burt Hooton in 1979. The last Dodger with a longer streak was Andy Messersmith, who lasted six innings in his first 34 starts in 1975 (coincidentally, his final year with the Dodgers before free agency).
Greinke leads MLB with 17 quality starts. Clayton Kershaw is second with 16. Scherzer is tied for sixth with 14.
Entering Sunday, Greinke has 35⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, and five straight scoreless starts. During the live-ball era (since 1920), the only streaks longer in baseball belong to Dodgers, with Orel Hershiser (1988) and Don Drysdale (1968) each pitching six straight scoreless outings during their record scoreless streaks, per ESPN Stats & Info.
Greinke retired the final 21 batters faced in his last start, and in his last 37 batters faced has allowed only one single and one batter to reach base on a strikeout wild pitch.
Scherzer pitched a no-hitter on June 20, the middle game of three starts that saw him take a perfect game at least into the sixth inning in each game. Scherzer during that run retired 31 straight batters at one point, and held batters hitless for 52 consecutive at-bats with only one walk and one hit batter mixed in a 54-plate-appearance stretch.
Game info
Time: 10:35 a.m. PT
TV: SportsNet LA, TBS