Washington Nationals rookie Brad Peacock pitched five complete innings, shutting down the New York Mets — and giving the Nationals a 2-0 shutout win (their fourth victory in a row) at Citi Field in New York. Peacock, one of a passel of arms in Washington’s pitching-heavy farm system, threw 94 pitches, 61 of them for strikes in his first start, and his first win, in the major leagues.

“To tell you the truth, I thought I was going to be nervous, but just like my last outing, once I made that first pitch, I was fine,” Peacock said, following the victory. “I made sure I took deep breaths out there. I settled in nicely.” Nats’s skipper Davey Johnson praised the young righty’s approach. “I was real impressed,” Johnson said. “He showed a lot of poise. He didn’t get flustered.”

The Nationals scored their only runs of the game in the top of the 3rd inning on a fielding error from David Wright. With Ian Desmond on first, Ryan Zimmerman was given a free pass, after which Michael Morse and Jayson Werth singled. Desmond and Zimmerman scored in the inning. That was all that Washington would need.

The Washington bullpen was again impressive. Former starter Tom Gorzelanny shut down the Mets in two complete innings, Tyler Clippard registered his 34th hold, and Drew Storen came on in the ninth inning to notch his 37th save. Gorzelanny was particularly effective, and has been so over the last ten games, lowering his ERA from 4.50 to 4.13.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Peacock throws a knuckle curve, though it’s reportedly more of a “spike” curve of the type thrown by Cliff Lee and Dan Haren, than a knuckling curveball that was used by Mike Mussina. But Peacock throws it more regularly than either Lee or Haren. The knuckle curve creator (though there is strong disagreement on this point), was Chicago’s Burt Hooton, back in the early 1970s . . .

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The Nats were reportedly displeased with their play over their last two days in Miami (“We’re definitely upset,” Willie Harris admitted. “We’re not like in the past, where you might think it’s just another ballgame. It’s different), but the truth is that, while the Nats could have played much better, they lost to two tough pitchers and a team of suddenly surging long ball hitters. It’s sometimes just this simple: the other team plays better and the guys they put on the mound are in command of their stuff. So it was on Saturday, when Chris Volstad’s knuckle curve subdued the Nats order, stifling a confident team in a visitor’s park. Which is simply to say: the Nats ran into a team that boasts pitchers who know how to throw complete games. The Marlins are tied with the Phillies for most complete games — having turned in complete performances from Volstad (who held the Nats to just four hits) Ricky Nolasco (beaten by Scott Olsen on Friday) and Josh Johnson — who was in complete command on Sunday.

Which is not to say that the Nats played (or pitched) well — they didn’t. Craig Stammen remained inconsistent through four innings on Saturday, pulled early by Riggleman when it was clear that he simply didn’t have his stuff. After two good outings, Stammen seemed to slip back to his old ways: serving up batting practice fastballs to a group of hitters who knew exactly what to do with them. John Lannan endured the same kind of outing on Sunday, though this time the Nats looked a little less like the defensive bumblers of ’09. Pitching was still the problem — Lannan gave up nine hits through five shaky innings and the bullpen wasn’t much better, with Brian Bruney as ineffective behind Lannan as Tyler Walker had been behind Stammen. Bruney was puzzled by his continued struggles: “Really, honestly, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said following the Marlins Sunday win. “I think you can just jumble everything together and say it’s frustrating.”

Chris Volstad is an imposing presence on the mound (6-8, 225), with a pitcher-heavy fastball and a smooth delivery. But his best pitch is a “knuckle curve” — what some players call a “spike curve.” Oddly, it (and not the fastball) is Volstad’s out pitch (or at least it was on Saturday) and when he throws it well (as he did against the Nats), he’s damn near unhittable. The knuckle curve features a semi-curve ball grip with one or two fingers curled back. To be effective, the ball is launched or pushed towards the plate instead of thrown. The master of the knuckle curve was Burt Hooton, a Texas phenom who pitched fifteen years for the Cubs, Dodgers and Astros. Hooton was the “next big thing” when he arrived in Chicago in 1971 — one of the few MLB players to vault from college directly into a team’s starting line-up.

For a time in Chicago, Hooton looked like the real deal. He struck out 15 in one of his earliest appearances in 1971 and in his first outing in ’72 he threw a breathtaking no-hitter against the Phillies. But Hooton struggled with the Cubs the rest of the way and was dealt to L.A. in 1975. Hooton was 19-8 for the Trolleys in 1978, his best year. In 1981, Hooton was named the NLCS MVP for his stellar pitching performances against the Expos and went on to pitch well against the Yankees in the ’81 World Series. But while Hooton was the master of the knuckle curve, he was never the master of the strike zone — and never equaled in his later career the lights-out promise of his 1972 no-hitter. Hooton has served as a pitching coach in the Astro’s organization since his retirement and, in 2009, was inducted into the University of Texas Hall of Fame, along with Astro’s slugger Lance Berkman.