Remember when Tommy Hanson was the next big thing in Atlanta? The 6-6, 220 pound righty is still the ace-to-be in the Braves rotation, but his rise to stardom has been eclipsed by all the attention given to new Atlanta right fielder Jason Heyward. Or maybe it’s that Hanson, while still sporting a nifty 2.83 ERA, can only help the Braves win every fifth day — that is, not often enough to keep Atlanta from drifting ever lower in the standings. Hanson’s cannon-shot arm was what the Braves needed last night to keep the Tomahawks from losing their tongue-swallowing ninth-in-a-row on the road, but the 23-year-old phenom was shaky in six innings, giving up nine hits and four runs while striking out five. Instead, it was the normally somnolent Braves bats that came through, as Atlanta squeaked out a much-need (at least from their point of view) 7-6 extra innings tilt vs. the Nationals at Nats Park.

Braves manager Bobby Cox, who has been slowly steaming through the Braves’ early season woes, was not impressed with Hanson. “Tommy probably had the worst game that he has had all season,” Cox said after last night’s contest. “He just wasn’t on tonight. He made mistakes with the breaking ball and some fastballs.” Not everything came up roses for the Chops last night, despite the win: Heyward left the game with a groin pull in the second inning, the Braves line-up continues to struggle at the plate, and Cox is attempting to juggle a starting rotation that has been just so-so. In fact, for Cox, working through this year’s starting rotation issues might be more of a challenge than what he faced in 2009 — it’s now clear that Kenshin Kawakami will not be the answer on the mound that the Braves front office once supposed, Tim Hudson isn’t getting any younger (and has a history of arm problems), Derek Lowe is proving particularly susceptible to giving up big innings and the Braves’ middle-of-the-rotation starter, Javier Vazquez is somewhere in New York (nursing arm pain and getting hit around). That leaves Bobby Cox with a lot of questions, and very few answers.

It’s not as if the Nationals don’t have issues of their own. You have to wonder how long Livan Hernandez can pitch like Whitey Ford, whether Jason Marquis will return healthy (or at all), whether John Lannan’s sore elbow will recover enough for him to become the John Lannan of 2009, whether Scott Olsen (who faces the Tomahawks tonight) can keep up his I’m-finally-back-where-I-was performances and whether Craig Stammen can prove consistent enough to get out of his every-other-game funk. The sobering truth is that while the Braves rotation is skaky, the Nats’ is even shakier, despite the Nats solid early season run. While Nats fans wait on the promotion of Strasburg, Storen and the healing of Jordan Zimmermann, their arrival is no guarantee that Washington fans will be watching one of baseball’s best rotations come July. As far as pitching is concerned, not only can anything happen, it usually does. So don’t be surprised if, in a few weeks — and the inevitable blow-outs that greet young arms — Mike Rizzo is shopping around for someone to complement a staff that is (after all) a patchwork of older arms and untested shoulders.