When chips were down, Nationals turned to their pair of aces

Sure, there were reasons for at least mild concern when the Nationals lost five straight games and found themselves sporting more losses then wins for the first time in 2 1/2 years. There also were a couple of guys named Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg scheduled to make back-to-back starts.

Need to stop a losing streak? Handing the ball to those two aces is a pretty good place to start.

"Sometimes they make it look so easy," reliever Ryan Madson said. "And it's not."

No, it most certainly is not, despite the best efforts of Scherzer and Strasburg to make it appear that way the last 48 hours. At a time when the Nationals really needed them, the anchors of their rotation propped everyone else up on their backs and carried them back over the .500 hump.

Scherzer did it Monday night, going the distance in a two-hit shutout of the Braves. Strasburg didn't quite duplicate that tonight, but the eight zeroes he posted were more than enough to propel the Nationals to a 4-1 victory that helped this team move one step farther away from its early season slump.

"They picked us up," said manager Davey Martinez, whose club now sits at 6-5 and has a chance to sweep Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon.

Strasburg's insistence on compartmentalizing everything doesn't allow him to consider anything that happened the previous day or may happen in upcoming days. To him, it made no difference what Scherzer had done in the series opener. But whether he does it consciously or not, the right-hander serves as the perfect right cross following Scherzer's opening jab at opponents. By the time they've completed that 1-2 punch, the other guys barely even know what hit them.

"When they're on and throwing the ball like they did the last two nights, it's tough to score runs against them," said Ryan Zimmerman, whose first-inning triple staked Strasburg to a 2-0 lead. "Especially if we can kind of jump out early and get a cushion, and then they can really attack and go after them. Both of those guys threw the ball great the last two nights. When they pitch like that, we need to make sure that they get the win."

Each did get the win, Strasburg with his typical robotic consistency, scattering three hits and two walks but never getting himself into serious trouble. Along the way, he kept his pitch count low, low enough that there appeared to be a chance he could duplicate Scherzer and complete the game.

"I think I just try to take it one pitch at a time," Strasburg said. "You want to make quality pitches. There's going to be some games where you're not as efficient. But when all is said and done, it's still about executing. And if it's 100 pitches through five, or 100 pitches through seven or eight, you're just going to go until they take the ball out of your hand."

When Martinez strolled to the mound with two outs in the eighth, Strasburg's pitch count at 102 and Sammy Solís warm in the bullpen, it looked like the manager would be taking the ball out of his starter's hand. But after a brief conversation, Martinez turned around and walked back to the dugout while a crowd of 19,357 cheered with delight as Strasburg was given the opportunity to finish the inning.

"I told him: 'Hey, what you got?'" Martinez said. "He ran the bases a few times, wanted to make sure he was OK. He said he was good. I said: 'Well, get this out, let's go.'" And he did. He was outstanding today, all the way around."

Strasburg needed only one more pitch to get that out, inducing a weak grounder to second from Ender Inciarte. His pitch count now at 103, he took a seat for the rest of the evening, handing over the ninth to Solís and Madson, who allowed one run but recorded the final two outs to earn his first save.

So maybe Strasburg didn't quite match Scherzer from a pitching perspective. He did outdo his rotation mate from an offensive perspective, lining a sharp single to center in his first at-bat, drawing a walk his next time up and winding up safe at second base after Braves pitcher Shane Carle threw his sixth-inning sacrifice bunt attempt away.

The only thing missing from Strasburg's offensive line score was the stolen base that Scherzer picked up on Monday. For the record, Strasburg did not mimic Scherzer and beg his manager to let him try it.

"No, I kind of know my strengths," he said. "And I know my weaknesses, too."

The Nationals know their strengths as a team. They're both right-handers with electric stuff and the ability to take control of a game and carry their teammates to victory when they really need them.

And nobody else on the roster takes them for granted.

"There's only a few teams that have that, if any," Madson said. "If you want a stopper, there's no other place to look than Max Scherzer. And then to be followed up by Stephen? It's fun to watch. That's why this team is going to be really good."