An early morning email to CFG seemed to say it all: “What a series. It makes me proud to be a Nats fan.” Indeed, Nationals fans have a right to be buoyant after sweeping a four game series from the Phillies. And in Philadelphia. Phillies fans felt the disappointment after dropping their sixth loss in a row (by a score of 6-1) — when it became clear that the Nats were on their way to a victory, they streamed from “the Bank,” issuing boos to their team.

“Our pitching is great. Our defense is great and we have timely hitting,” the Nationals Michale Morse said following the victory. “We had a lot of big hits. We had timely hitting this whole series. It shows you that we could play. We could be a big contender in this division coming up.”

The story of the game, once again, was what was happening to the resurgent Nationals on the mound. Indeed, the Nationals were only able to bang out seven hits against an effective Roy Oswalt. But it was Nationals’ pitching that won the game: rookie auditioner Brad Peacock threw 5.2 innings of one hit baseball — an extraordinary performance from a former Triple-A star who is now in the running as a potential fourth (or even third) starter in 2012.

“I had a lot of good pitches tonight,” Peacock said following his outing. “Everything was working. I just let them put the ball in play. My defense was great tonight. [Catcher Jesus Flores] called a great game. That’s all you can ask for. I didn’t shake him off one time — not once — because I trust him back there.”

The victory was not only the culmination of a four game series: it marked the tenth victory for the Nationals in eighteen meetings between the teams this year. And while the Phillies said they weren’t panicking, they were clear disturbed by the reaction of their fans.

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You can never have too much pitching, but it appears that (if yesterday is any indication), the Nationals have more than enough for next year. Ross Detwiler is the latest evidence — the young lefty produced another more-than-solid outing on Tuesday night, at the back end of a day-night double header, taming the Philadelphia Phillies through 7.1 innings. He shut down the defending N.L. East champs and provided a sweep of the doubleheader in Philadelphia.

The 3-0 victory put the Nationals at 8-8 vs. Philadelphia this season, and Charlie Manuel has to be impressed — the Nats play Philadelphia tough, which is more than you can say about their abilities against the Marlins. Of course, Detwiler had help: a Danny Espinosa home run in the second, a throwing error from Phillies’ catcher Carlos Ruiz that allowed Jayson Werth to score, and his own single up the middle in the sixth.

But Detwiler’s heroics tell only a part of the story: while the box score shows a Nationals’ win, a Philadelphia fans memory will come down to this — an upstart team and untried lefty came into “the Bank” and outdueled Cliff Lee (with his stinking 2.38 ERA), a member of Philadelphia’s vaunted quartet of starters — the third of four veteran pitchers that Philadelphia is counting on to mount yet another assault in this game of capture the flag.

Of course, the other line in Philadelphia is not so much that the Nationals won, but that the Phillies lost. The Ashburns have already clinched the division and can rightly (if lamely) claim that impressive as Detwiler was, Philadelphia’s twin losses on Tuesday show that the Ponies aren’t exactly all in. Still, the Bard of South Philadelphia, is a little disturbed, and not necessarily because he’s paid to be.

“I’m not worried, I just like to see us play better,” manager Charlie Manuel said following the twin losses. “We clinched our division three days ago. Right now, I wouldn’t call it going through the motions. I’d say we’re not focused. We’re not focused into the game, I feel like. It’s normal in some respects.”

For Davey Johnson, however, Detwiler’s pitching (and not the Phillies’ performance), was the story of the game — he was why they performed poorly. “I can’t say enough good things about him,” Johnson said of his young starter. “The Phillies are a great hitting ballclub and he was letter perfect . . . Today he was nice, calm and collected and threw a lot of quality pitches.”

Detwiler made headlines, but so too did Drew Storen, who was perfect in the ninth, and notched his 40th save. Considering the Nationals’ bullpen performance in 2010, Storen’s season long excellence should be cause for a celebration or two. Storen has given the Nationals just over 72 innings in the role of closer this year, with a 2.86 ERA. Those numbers put him among the league’s elite.

No Country For Tim Lincecum: Forget pitching, what you can’t ever have enough of is baseball. Sliding up and down the dial last night (well, it used to be a dial), you could take in a murder in Connecticut over at CNN, or No Country For Old Men on AMC — it must be a marathon, they’ve shown it back to back on successive nights . . .

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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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A regular reader of ours, an L.A. native, keeps pounding away about his beloved Dodgers — and like all good partisan fans, he predicted they’d win the N.L. West and then sweep their way through the post-season. “They’re the new Giants,” he said last April, “except that they’re better.”

Such expectations have not been realized: the Dodgers are a single game under .500, and are mired in third place on the left coast — well behind the disappointing Giants, and twelve games out of first place. This hasn’t stopped this fan from continuing his verbal assault. “Yeah,” he says. “But what about Clayton Kershaw? You have to admit, now, c’mon. Kershaw’s the best pitcher in the National League.”

Our tactic has been to ignore this, while reminding him of his April prediction — and what has happened in L.A. since. But at least when it comes to Kershaw, he has a point. If there’s one bit of good news that Nationals fans can take away from their most recent soggy series with the Trolleys (they lost two of three), it’s that at least they didn’t have to face Kershaw. And last night, against San Francisco, Kershaw put himself in the running for the Cy Young, outdueling the McCovey’s Tim Lincecum — and throwing an eight inning, three hit, nine strikeout gem.

Kershaw is now 18-5, and measures up well against the other hurlers in line for the Cy Young: Ian Kennedy, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay. The problem is that Kershaw plays for the Dodgers, which shouldn’t make the least bit of difference when it comes to the Cy Young voting — except that it will.

Even so, Kershaw should now be considered a front runner: while he doesn’t have the profile of Halladay, he leads the N.L. in strikeouts (ahead of Lincecum, Halladay, Lee and Kennedy — and in that order), and the fact that he plays for the L.A. Bankrupts could actually be in his favor. He’s pulled off a great season despite the team around him, and he leads the Nationals League in innings, ERA and strikeouts per nine.

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The Washington Nationals won ugly on Friday night, but they won. With two on and one out in the eleventh inning, Jayson Werth hit a bounder to Astros’ third baseman Jimmy Paredes who, in an attempt to get a force out at second, threw the ball into left field. The muff scored Ryan Zimmerman with the walk-off run, giving the Nationals a badly needed, 4-3, bottom of the 11th inning walk off victory.

“Initially, I hit it and I knew there was a potential double play, so I was running hard out of the box,” Werth said following the victory. “I looked to see what happened at second when I didn’t see the ball. I thought it was going to be there. I kept looking, and I saw it go in the outfield. That was that.” The walk-off notched a win for Tyler Clippard — but the victory could have gone to the entire bullpen, which kept the Astros off the board from the 6th inning on.

The botched throw from Paredes lacked the deep-throated dramatics of the Nationals’ usual walk-off triumphs, but the win was welcome: the Nationals had struggled with putting runs on the board of late, and were attempting to recover from a late-game 7-4 pasting at the hands of the Dodgers on Thursday.

Even with the win, the Nationals were able to scatter only six hits off of five Houston pitchers. The lack of offense has been the most disheartening part of an up-and-down season. In the wake of the Houston win on Friday, Nationals’ manager Davey Johnson told the media the problem has kept him awake nights. “I’m used to a little more of a comfort zone,” Johnson said. “With all the young players … it’s been that kind of a struggle. Everybody’s trying to probably do a little too much.”

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The clubhouse is crowded with new arrivals, and three of them started the game on Friday. Steve Lombardozzi started at short, Chris Marrero was at first, and Tom Milone was on the mound. The early results are just starting to come in, but here’s what they say: Lombardozzi has not yet mastered major league pitching, Marrero has yet to hit the long ball, and Milone needs to work on getting through a line-up the second time . . .

For those who think that is too negative, there’s this — there doesn’t seem much doubt that Lombardozzi can hit, Marrero’s double last night to left-center was one of the hardest hit non-dinger slaps this year at Nationals’ Park and Milone is absolutely unintimidated by major league hitting . . .

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Just a little over one year from Tommy John surgery, Stephen Strasburg returned to the mound in Washington, threw five complete innings — and left the game with the Nationals in the lead, 3-0. It almost looked as if the young righty had picked up from where he left off: he threw 56 pitches (40 of them for strikes), while giving up just two hits and striking out four.

Unfortunately for Strasburg, who was in line for the win, the Nationals’ bullpen could not hold the 3-0 lead, and the Los Angeles Dodgers went on to outslug and outscore the Nationals, 7-3. Despite the loss, Strasburg was the story. His fastball topped out at 99 mph, and he seemed in control and comfortable on the mound.

The Nationals had to be pleased with Strasburg’s outing, as it was right on schedule after one year of rehab. The righty will now follow the agenda laid out for Jordan Zimmermann (who also underwent Tommy John surgery), that Nats’ fans are familiar with: four starts to finish the season, an off-season of rest, followed by a closely monitored innings count for the 2012 campaign.

Despite this, tonight’s outing charted a way back, and now sets up a Nationals’ rotation with Strasburg as the number one starter, followed by Jordan Zimmermann and John Lannan. The Nationals actually have a lot to choose from, as Davey Johnson tests out the young arms this September. Brad Peacock made his major league debut in relief of Strasburg tonight, throwing a serviceable 1.1 innings — but Johnson is also taking a good look at Chien-Ming Wang, who has looked impressive and Ross Detwiler.

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John Lannan threw 5.1 innings of five hit ball and the Nationals stroked four home runs to down the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-2 at Nationals Park on Monday. Ian Desmond led off the game with a home run, Michael Morse hit two and Jayson Werth hit one to lead the Nationals’ attack. The Nationals assault was in stark contrast to the problems they’ve been having at the plate over the last two weeks.

All of the Nationals’ homers except for one came in the first inning, and off of Trolley righty Hiroki Kuroda. John Lannan, meanwhile, threw 94 pitches in registering his ninth win against 11 losses. Lannan later said that he was anxious to go deeper into the game, but couldn’t convince Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson to keep him in. “I felt good and I wanted to keep battling,” Lannan said after the win. “But my pitch count was high. It was a hot day. Our bullpen was fresh. I understood why.”

Michael Morse’s two home runs gave him 26 for the year — to go along with 82 RBIs. The first baseman/left fielder is clearly the team’s MVP for 2011, having put together his best season of his late blooming career. Jayson Werth took time to compliment Morse after the win on Monday. “I’m really happy for him,” Werth said. “This game is not easy. We had similar parts of our career as far as the age. I can appreciate it. I think he always had it in him.” Werth’s game is also improving, after a tough 2011 and what has accounted for nearly a year-long slump. Werth hit his 18th home run of the year in the first inning, and notched his 52nd RBI.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: There’s been a changing of the guard in Florida, where the Marlins have struggled not only to put fans into the seats, but to put a good ball club on the field. The Marlins started to unravel after 6-7 fireballer Josh Johnson went out with a shoulder injury and the team cratered during a mid-June losing streak (they lost 18 of 19, and eleven in a row) that saw the rehiring of steady-as-she-goes Jack McKeon . . .

The return of Johnson will help next year, but it’s not likely to be enough. Last night on MLB Network, the irascible Larry Bowa said there had been a “changing of the guard” in Florida. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez “is no longer the face of the franchise,” Bowa said — “it’s Mike Stanton.” That sounds right. Yesterday, Ramirez was told that he will need surgery on his left shoulder . . .

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