Despite suffering a broken nose and black eye one day prior, Max Scherzer tossed seven shutout innings for the Washington Nationals on Wednesday.

"Trust me, this thing looks a lot worse than it actually is," Scherzer said. "I felt zero pain. There's been plenty of other injuries where I felt a lot of pain and I've had to pitch through. I'll hang my hat on those starts, but tonight I felt zero pain. This is part of what you have to do. You take the ball every fifth time.

"That's my responsibility to the team, to make sure I always post, and I knew I could post tonight."

Scherzer bunted a ball off his face during Tuesday's batting practice.

"Going out there and throwing, the only thing I had to deal with was the swelling underneath the eye," he said. "It was kind of jiggling around, and so in warm-ups I just had to get used to knowing what it was feeling like to throw the ball and just have that swelling."