The Philadelphia Phillies clinched the N.L. East division title with a decisive win over the Washington Nationals on Monday night, 8-0. The Nationals did not take the defeat well, complaining that too many of the fans at Nats’ Park were there to root for their home away team. “It was kind of embarrassing. Everyone in the stadium is clapping against you and you are at home. It’s not really where you want to be,” rookie shortstop Ian Desmond said following the Nats’ loss. “I wanted to go out there to win that game and show them we can play with them. We took two out of three from the Braves. We played them well all year. [And now], 8-0 is kind of ridiculous.” The Phillies win was assured by a brilliant big-game performance from Phillies’ righty Roy Halladay, who handcuffed the Nats — allowing only two hits in pitching a complete game. The loser was John Lannan, with rookie reliever Joe Bisenius giving up four runs in the ninth.

Down in Atlanta, the once first-place-dwelling Braves reacted to the pressure of the Phillies’ triumph by engineering a heart-stopping 2-1, 11th inning walk-off win against the Florida Fish. The win came on an Omar Infante two out single that plated Nate McLouth. The victory kept the Braves, trailing the Phils in the N.L. East by six games (and now out of the sprint for the N.L. East title), one-half game ahead of the San Diego Padres in the race for the wild card. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Braves won in Atlanta: the Chops have the best at-home record in all of baseball (winning at a .697 clip). “We pitch good here, and good pitching is going to give you a chance, if you’re not scoring a lot of runs, to score late,” energized Atlanta skipper Bobby Cox said after the extra innings walk-off. “We’ve won a ton of games in extra innings, the eighth inning and the ninth inning here.” The Padres will be watching closely — they trail the Braves and were ousted by the Cubs in San Diego in a teeth-clenching 1-0 loss. The Braves win and Friars’ loss seemed typical of the 2010 campaign — the Braves won a close one at home, the Padres lost when they failed to hit.

The race for the N.L. West title is tight, tight, tight. With just six games left in the season, the McCoveys lead the division by a single game, while the Colorado Rockies have fallen five games back — and are out of the race. Those who make the schedule know what they’re doing, or perhaps they’re even prescient: the Padres face-off against the Cubs in three games over the next three days, before heading to San Francisco, where they will face the Giants in the last three games of the season. With nearly everything else in the National League decided (the Redbirds, trailing the Redlegs in the Central, face elimination), the San Diego-San Francisco series will be crucial, and a classic match-up between solid and deep pitching staffs. Anyone can win in the three game series, but you have to believe the McCoveys will have the edge: they’re at home and (at least in comparison to the Padres), they can hit. The Giants are preparing for the worst (or the best, depending on your perspective), by considering shifting their rotation. The new cycle would mean that ace Tim Lincecum would start the first game of the McCoveys-Friars confrontation . . . and be available to start in any potential tie-breaker.

Long about the first week in August, Atlanta manager Bobby Cox was getting ready to do his victory lap through the National League — a celebration of not only his last year in baseball, but the success of his Atlanta Braves. There was, of course, a cautionary note: Cox is not only much too smart to count his chickens (or pennants), the Braves also had two months remaining before the end of the season. So, while the Phillies were struggling (the story of Raul Ibanez — who captured headlines in ’09 — was not a story in 2010), the Atlanta Braves were hardly a lock. While the Phillies had had their problems with injuries, with poor hitting (Jason Werth simply did not look like, well, Jason Werth) and with indifferent pitching, their acquisition of Roy Oswalt showed just how serious they took their own problems, and how willing they were to resolve them. So Bobby pressed — urging his team on to a series of tough road wins in mid-August (over Houston, the Trolleys and the Nationals), so that by early September it seemed (seemed!) as if the Tomahawks had innoculated themselves against a late-season Phillies’ run.

And then it happened. On August 25, the Braves blew a seemingly insurmountable lead against the (who else) Colorado Rockies and went on to lose the game against the Heltons, 12-10. It was something like (if not exactly like) having a black cat run in front of your dugout — or watching an usher deny seating for a goat. Braves fans locked into the loss as if sensing that somehow, and in some intangible way, the Braves’ season was about to change. “I’m speechless right now, and couldn’t describe what happened this afternoon even if I wanted to,” the blogger on Talking Chop opined. Worse yet, the disheartening loss marked a three game sweep at the hands of the Purples, who were intent on making a run of their own. True, the Braves fought back with decisive wins against the Marlins and Mets (perfecting their pitching, blowing out successive 9 run games) — but at the same time they were doing that, the Phillies were making a move of their own. By September 1, the Phillies were right there, breathing down the necks of the first place Braves. And the Braves felt the pressure.

It’s not, mind you, that the Braves played badly, it’s just that they weren’t playing as well as they had in June or July, when they seemed to dominate every opponent. In retrospect, it seems as if August 25 was the turning point: that one “tipping point” in a 162 game season where a team loses its momentum while another (in this case, the Ponies) finally finds its groove. “Why hello thar, 2nd Place!” Talking Chop headlined on September 7, just two weeks after the deflating loss to Colorado. But the game that put them in second place, a 5-0 drubbing at the hands of the lowly Ahoys (a terrible, awful “miserable” defeat), confirmed the worst fears of the Atlanta faithful — they would have to play catch-up against one of the most feared late-season teams in the National League.

It’s not that the Braves don’t have a chance. They do. And a good one: if they don’t take the N.L. East, they can still capture the Wild Card though, obviously, they’ll have to play better than they have the last two weeks. Still, they’re only a half game ahead of the Padres in the me-too standings. But the numbers are demanding, and torturous: the Braves will not only have to play well against the Mets (their three games series starts tonight), they’ll have to play well during the all-important three game tilt against the Phillies, which starts Monday. There is one caveat: both series are on the road, where the Braves have twice as many losses as wins, and where they have dropped seven of their last nine. Which is what makes the pending six game set against the Mets and Phillies so important — and dramatic. Their trump card? We may not like him, even a little bit, but Braves fans will tell you with that look of absolute confidence: when all else fails, they always have Bobby Cox.

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.