WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- With a left ankle sprain behind him -- or underneath him, perhaps -- Max Scherzer took the mound for his Spring Training debut on Friday night against the Cardinals.

The Nationals ace was slated for 30-35 pitches in two innings in his first outing. He ended up tossing 38 to eight batters across 1 2/3 frames. Scherzer fanned two, walked a pair and allowed two runs off one hit in Washington’s 7-6 win over St. Louis.

“The ankle’s been good,” Scherzer said. “I’ve been getting through it. I can pitch at 100 percent on the ankle, so that’s the good news. I can get through the ball, so no worries on that end tonight.”

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Scherzer sprained his ankle during conditioning drills two weeks before camp. The right-hander noted a left foot injury is “more worrisome” than the right foot, so he took things carefully. Through his recovery, he reached the point where he could put all of his weight on his ankle and torque on it.

“When you progress through something like this, one little thing can lead to another little thing and that can lead up to your arm,” he said. “So I’m cognizant of that. I’m more worried about something happening to my arm than to my ankle. That’s where I was just trying to be really under control tonight, get my pitches in and then really start focusing on dialing up the intensity here in the starts after this.”

Scherzer hadn’t seen game action since his final start of the 2020 season on Sept. 26. With it being his first game of ‘21, his intensity level didn’t reach “that final gear,” as he described it, in On Friday, he wanted to get a feel for the game, throw strikes and work on mechanics.

“Every pitch was there, every pitch was working,” he said. “The location will get a little bit better, the sharpness will get a little bit better and the consistency will get a little bit better. When you start doing that, you fill up the zone, you start pounding the zone, then you start having putaway pitches, doing every little thing you’ve got to do to be able to pitch efficiently and keep the pitch count down. That will just come with time.”

While Scherzer’s approach may have been different for this outing, there was a sense of familiarity to it. He was caught by Alex Avila, his teammate from his earlier days on the Tigers. Avila had flashbacks to their Detrot years as they threw in the bullpen, and once the game began, Scherzer looked like the pitcher Avila had gotten to know years ago.

“He looked like the ankle was a non-factor,” Avila said. “The ball was coming out of his hand really nice, as far as his fastball. We just kind of worked his other pitches, his secondary pitches. [It] looked like the ankle [injury] is well past him."

So what’s next for Scherzer now that he has his first game in the books? The Nationals would like him to get stretched out to 50 pitches in his next outing.

“He was good,” manager Dave Martinez said. “He was Max.”