Max Scherzer didn't look for excuses after Toronto's loss to the Orioles.

"I'm accountable for my mistakes," Scherzer said, per Keegan Matheson of MLB.com.

He pointed directly to one specific pitch as the turning point of his outing.

"In that situation, the two-strike pitch to Gunnar Henderson, I felt I could have made a better pitch. I got hit on that," Scherzer said.

That's a real admission from a veteran who's earned the right to be blunt about his own performance.

But he also stood by the rest of his outing, drawing a clear line between that one mistake and everything else.

"From then on, I felt like I executed. I wasn't leaving pitches in the heart of the plate. That's where I have to tip my cap to them. They got base hits on pitches I put in locations I'm comfortable with."

Why his tone matters for a rotation under pressure

That distinction is important. Scherzer isn't claiming he pitched a clean game overall, but he's also not pretending every hit against him was a mistake pitch.

Sometimes an opposing lineup simply beats a well-located pitch, and Scherzer seemed genuinely comfortable saying so.

"It's frustrating. That's baseball, I'm not going to cry about it," he added, closing the thought with the kind of even-keeled perspective that's defined his late-season resurgence.

That steadiness matters given how much Toronto has leaned on Scherzer's turnaround this season, a pitcher many had written off after his early struggles and health issues.

One rough loss against Baltimore doesn't erase the improvement he's shown since returning from injury, even if it stings in the moment against a direct wild-card competitor.

Toronto needs him to bounce back quickly, given how much this Orioles series matters in the crowded race for the final wild-card spot.

Whether this outing was a genuine blip or the start of some late-season fatigue creeping in is the question his next start will need to answer.