Baseball’s elite was pitching on Monday — Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay were facing off in San Francisco, Justin Verlander was throwing in Kansas City, and Stephen Strasburg took the mound in Washington. Of the five, Verlander seemed the most locked in (nine innings, seven hits, nine strikeouts), though Strasburg showed why he is now considered one of the best hurlers in baseball.

In six innings of work, Strasburg kept his team in the game against the Houston Astros, and was able to pull out a win when his teammates scored four runs in the sixth inning. The key to the D.C. victory, though, was the hitting of super-sub Steve Lombardozzi, who went 4-5 and plated two. Washington’s steady-as-she-goes bullpen then held the Astros to one run through three innings to seal the victory, with Henry Rodriguez closing out the ‘Stros in the 9th.

This was one of those rare starts for Lombardozzi, who was subbing for the struggling Danny Espinosa at second — but he showed why he made the team out of Spring Training. “He is a good two-strike hitter, he makes the pitchers throw the ball over,” Johnson said of Lombardozzi. “He is a little more aggressive in this role, which is good, because it’s harder to take a lot of pitches . . . He has a good idea of the strike zone.”

Strasburg pitched well, but he was not at his best. He struggled in the sixth inning, giving up three singles and a walk and allowing Houston to tie the game at 2. “I thought he threw the ball well. In his previous start, I took him farther than I wanted him to,” Johnson said of Strasburg’s outing. “It probably took a little bit out of him when he threw [over 100 pitches] the second time out. But he was going along pretty good. He had that rough inning [in the sixth], but he got out of it with the score tied.”

With the score tied in the sixth, and Strasburg in line for a “no decision,” the Nationals put two on the board and put the game out of reach for Houston. In the bottom of that frame, Houston starter Kyle Weiland gave up a single to Rick Ankiel, walked pinch hitter Roger Bernadina and shortstop Ian Desmond, before Lombardozzi put a bleeder into left field to score two. That was enough to seal the 6-3 win. Ryan Zimmerman’s bat finally came alive in the win, as he notched two hits in four appearances, and accounted for two RBIs.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: What the hell is wrong with Tim Lincecum? The normally lights-out San Francisco righty has been anything but in the early going, and his performance on Monday night was no exception. Lincecum was all over the strike zone, and was clearly frustrated by his lack of command.

Facing off against Roy Halladay, Lincecum gave up five runs and eight hits over six innings — at one point throwing the ball up and in, and over the head of catcher Buster Posey, then pacing the mound in frustration at his lack of control. Lincecum’s velocity was also down. While this is unusual, it’s not unusual for this year. Lincecum has a 10.54 ERA and the Giants are struggling. The San Francisco Nine are 4-6 in the early stages of the 2012 campaign. This is the third time in three starts that Lincecum has struggled.

If there is good news, it is that the San Fran righty settled down after his first inning, which led McCovey manager Bruce Bochy to say that Lincecum is improving. Lincecum says that he needs to stay aggressive. “It’s easy to say when things start falling off in that first inning, ‘Here we go again.’ But I tried my best to put a stop to that and pitch better from the second inning on,” Lincecum said.

Lost in the kerfuffle over Lincecum’s struggles was Roy Halladay’s continued dominance. Halladay threw eight innings of seven hit ball to lead the Phillies to a ho-hum 5-2 win. Newbie closer Jonathan Papelbon came on in the ninth to notch his third save, with the Phillies now seemingly on track to make a run for the N.L. East flag.

New Nats’ lefty Gio Gonzalez pitched brilliantly in the Nationals’ home opener today, holding the Reds to two hits in seven complete innings — but it took a Cincinnati wild pitch in the 10th inning for Washington to notch their third victory in a row. The Nationals are now 5-2 and lead the N.L. East.

This game’s headliner was Gio Gonzalez, who was in control from the start. Hoping to make up for his first start (an uneven outing filled with command issues), Gonzalez wowed the home town sell-out crowd of 40,000-plus. While he didn’t notch the win, he gave up just two hits, struck out seven, and walked no one. Nats’ fans got to see first hand his killer curve, and how Cincinnati hitters flailed away at it without making contact.

The Nationals entered the 9th inning with a 2-0 lead, with Brad Lidge coming in to secure the save. But, after securing the first out, Lidge gave up a walk and a double before intentionally walking Jay Bruce to fill the bases. Ryan Ludwick then singled, scoring Joey Votto and Scott Rolen. Lidge was tarred with his first blown save of the season.

“It’s probably the toughest [to lose the lead], because of the way Gio pitched,” Lidge said after the game. “He deserved the win and, unfortunately, I couldn’t keep the lead for him. He had an outstanding game. The guys came through and bailed me out. We were able to scratch one across there. If we keep winning, I’ll be happy. I know I need to do a little better than today.”

Very few of the hometown crowd left the game after the 9th — knowing that the 2012 version of the Washington Nationals is not only a much different team than last years, but also has a shot at the playoffs. As if to emphasize how much the team has improved, former starter and hometown Ohio boy Craig Stammen set down the Reds 1-2-3 in the 10th. He struck out Harris, Stubbs and Cozart, throwing ten pitches, nine of them for strikes.

The Nationals were able to pull out the victory in the bottom of that frame, when Reds’ reliever Alfredo Simon (he was in Baltimore last year), threw a wild pitch past Nats’ hitter Roger Bernadina. Ryan Zimmerman, who had a rough game in the field (a throwing error in the 3rd and a ball he should have gotten to in the 9th), scampered home with the winning run.

Once again, the Nationals showed that, at least in the early going, they can score runs when they need to. Ian Desmond continued his torrid early season pace (he was 3-5), Adam LaRoche seems to have broken through his traditional early season slump (he was 2-5 with two RBIs), and Jayson Werth continues to hit the ball well — he’s hitting .296 in the early going.

It was a relieved Zimmerman who faced the press after the game, and alluded to his ninth inning coulda-woulda-shoulda: “Thank God we won that game, because if we would have lost that game, I couldn’t sleep tonight,” he said. “They are not routine plays like they call them, but I expect myself to make those plays. Thank God, we won. You can kind of forget about it and laugh about it now. Moving forward, I obviously have to make those plays.”

Jayson Werth went 4-5 and knocked in two runs — and the Nationals stroked thirteen hits — as the Anacostia Nine beat up on the New York Mets at Citifield 6-2 on Tuesday. This was the first regular season outing for Ross Detwiler, who pitched five complete innings and gave up just two hits.

“He probably could have given me another inning, but he didn’t have a full spring starting. It was an outstanding effort on his part,” Nats’ manager Davy Johnson said of Detwiler’s outing. The night proved to be a long one for the Mets, who entered the game unbeaten. But Washington’s first hitter, Ian Desmond, put a Dillon Gee offering into the left field seats. The Desmond dinger set the tone for the night, as Desmond, Werth and Ramos led the hitting attack.

Werth’s at bats brought a sigh of relief to the Nationals’ right fielder, who was hitting .071 coming into the game. But Werth had been having good at bats and had hit well in Spring Training, with the promise that a strong start would reverse the mediocre year he’d had in 2011. By the end of the game, he’d raised his average to .263.

Unlike their previous outing against the Mets, the Nationals were able to take advantage when they needed to, even though they left eleven men on base during the game. Ryan Zimmerman, who’s also been struggling at the plate, drove in his 500th RBI in the top of the eighth inning, when he brought in Wilson Ramos from third on a sacrifice fly.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Tuesday was both a good day (a 6-2 win in New York) and a bad one for the Nationals. It appears that Michael Morse will not be starting in Washington on Thursday, as a strained right lat muscle has failed to heal. Morse was forced from the single-A Hagerstown game on Monday in the seventh inning, when he could not throw the ball into the shortstop from the outfield. The earliest he could return would be Monday . . .

The Nationals are awaiting medical tests on Drew Storen’s tweaky elbow, and the Nationals fear he may need surgery to remove bone chips . . . The injuries to Morse and Storen, and Rick Ankiel’s continued occupation of the disabled list are sure to spur a clamor for the call-up of Bryce Harper, who’s hitting the snot out of the ball in Syracuse . . .

The “New” And Not So New MASN Team: Kristina Akra is the new on-field on-air reporter for MASN, replacing Debbi Taylor. Akra reported for NESN and the Red Sox. Attractive young women reporting from the field is all the rage in baseball just now (well . . . for the last thirty years), and it seems axiomatic: if their name is “Christina” they must spell it with a “k” . . . Our only suggestion? Watching her post-game interview with Jayson Werth last night was like watching a New York brownstone interview the Empire State Building. We’re not the only ones who noticed and kudos to Nats Enquirer for a great “screen grab” . . . Get the poor girl a chair . . .

There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information on why Akra replaced Taylor. Early word was that the reporting job was being eliminated. Akra’s appearance seems to undermine that theory. It may be that Taylor just didn’t fit (anyway, that’s what we think) — and she could be grating. Carpenter would key her from the booth — “and now let’s check in with Debbi Taylor” — and there would be a silent scream from “Natsland” . . . “noooooo . . .”

We remember, in particular, an on-air interview with Jayson Werth last year, when Taylor pressed him on Ryan Zimmerman. “So, how great is Ryan Zimmerman?” And then she asked him again. Asking once is fine, but twice? Viewers could see that Werth was getting irritated, even if she couldn’t (or, worse yet, maybe she could). “So just how great is Ryan?” He’d already given an answer, so he looked away and nodded. “Yeah, well, he’s great when he gets out of bed in the morning,” Werth said . . .  pretty rich, that . . .

The team of Bob Carpenter and F.P. Santangelo are back in the booth this year for MASN, and that’s more than okay with us. We flipped between the Nats’ game and the St. Louis-Cincinnati match-up, and noted that the Cardinals’ duo of sleepy and droopy were doing their we-don’t-have-much-to-say routine . . . during a random switch-over we counted four pitches before a word was uttered: “that’s three and oh on Votto . . .” Hello? Anyone there?

Like any on-air duo, it takes some time to get used to the two, and Santangelo’s self-effacing humor is winsomely attractive. They know the game, they call it well, they’re “homers” (we approve) and their humor has some redeeming qualities. At the end of last year, NatsGM did an unofficial poll of fans on whether the two should return, and the vote was overwhelmingly in favor . . .

After interminable months (and months) of anything-other-than-baseball, you can almost feel the rust peeling away, the snow melting (well, what there was of it), and the sun cracking through. It helps that, in the off-season, the Nationals have traded for a top-flight hurler (Gio Gonzalez), are considering playing Bryce “the kid” Harper right out of the blocks, and signed under-the-radar innings eater Edwin Jackson for the back of the rotation.

Which is not to mention the latest, perhaps most important news: that Ryan Zimmerman will stay with the Nationals until 2020, the result of agreeing to a contract extension that will pay him $100 million over six years. The extension became a reality after days of intense negotiation. Nationals fans are ecstatic — Zimmerman is not only “the face of the franchise,” but certainly the most popular player in a Nationals’ uniform. The downside, and there is one, is that Zim has had his share of injuries, having failed to play full seasons in the last two. But even when he struggles he doesn’t really struggle: the game changes when he’s on the field, the signature quality of “a franchise player.”

Baseball’s brainiacs give this deal a thumbs-up. Over at FanGraphs (our primary source for judging these kinds of things), Dave Cameron compares Zim with a set of third basemen (who were or are) at a similar age and with a similar “skill set” — that would be Adrian Beltre, Scott Rolen (with eight gold gloves), Eric Chavez, Robin Ventura, Travis Fryman and Troy Glaus. He concludes: Zimmerman compares well in terms of raw numbers with any of them and should “earn the money over the life of the deal.” And he beats the pants off of guys like Chavez and Fryman, “the downside risks.” The key for Zimmerman (and for all of them, as Cameron points out), is (and was) to stay healthy and play longer. Then too, as Cameron notes, Zimmerman is “one of the game’s most underrated players.”

That’s a fairly laconic statement. And while it’s hard to argue with Cameron’s numbers, there are other variables. The number comparisons do not take into account the “intangible” value of a guy like Zim — Beltre (a powerhouse in Texas, but not the same since) has not aged well, Rolen (even with a great glove) was always a malcontent, Chavez has been more often injured, Travis Fryman had a short career and (likewise) Troy Glaus lasted to 33.

Comparing Zimmerman to Robin Ventura, on the other hand, makes sense. The new manager of the White Sox didn’t work the leather nearly as well as Zimmerman, but he hit for power and showed flashes of RBI brilliance. Like Zimmerman, Ventura was good enough to come to the majors with little time in the minors, and was an immediate presence in the clubhouse — which accounts, we suppose, for the Pale Hose decision to hire him as their skipper. He has a Zim-like personality: steady-as-she-goes and incredibly competent. Like Zimmerman, Ventura was drafted in the first round, wanted to stay with the team that drafted him and was regularly underrated.

And there’s this: it’s hard to think of another third baseman in the NL East who compares with Zim. Chipper Jones is scraping bone-on-bone in Atlanta, Philadelphia’s Placido Polanco can’t hit for power, David Wright remains a puzzle in New York and no one would be surprised if we wake up someday to find that Florida’s Hanley Ramirez just robbed a 7-Eleven. In truth, Zimmerman is our odds-on favorite as the National League’s premier third sacker. He could easily start the All Star game, with competition from Aramis Ramirez (new to Milwaukee), slow-around-the-sack Pablo Sandoval and running-out-of-gas Scott Rolen.

Okay, okay, okay — the National League is a little light on third basemen, Milwaukee’s Ramirez and San Francisco’s Sandoval can really hit, and when it comes to Zimmerman we’re absolute homers, but when Zimmerman is healthy he’s an elite player. He certainly was in 2009, when the Nationals were going nowhere, but Zimmerman was at the top of his game — 33 home runs, 106 RBIs, and a Gold Glove. That was the year that was, with Zim showing the power of Beltre, the glove of Rolen, the presence of Ventura. Nationals fans would love to see another year like that — or (given the life of this extension) eight of them.

“Tommy was real impressive,” Nats’ manager Davey Johnson said of Tom Milone after the Nats dealt the Phillies a 4-3 defeat in ten innings on Tuesday afternoon. “He showed me a lot.” Milone pitched a solid six innings of shutout ball against the Phillies, giving up just four hits and striking out two.

But Milone’s probable win was erased by the Philllies in the bottom of the seventh, when Doug Slaten and Tyler Clippard couldn’t hold the heavy hitting Phillies, who tied the game on a Nats’ killer Raul Ibanez home run. Ibanez’s soaring dinger came off Tyler Clippard with two on base, and erased the heroics of Roger Bernadina, who had put one into the right field seats in the top of the frame.

It wasn’t until the 10th inning that the Nationals could strike back: with two out, Michael Morse walked (and went to second on a passed ball), Danny Espinosa was intentionally walked and pinch hitter Ryan Zimmerman singled to bring in Espinosa with the go-ahead run. Drew Storen came on in the bottom of the tenth (it was another nail biter) and recorded his 39th save.

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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Craig Stammen’s up-and-down season (and it’s been spent mostly down, in Syracuse) headed upwards on Tuesday — as the former 2010 starting hurler and career .217 hitter put a single into right field, then scored the winning run on a Ryan Zimmerman RBI to give the Nationals another 3-2 victory in New York. Stammen’s heroics at the plate were matched by those on the mound, as he picked up the win in relief.

Stammen has not been with the big club that often this year, but when he has he’s produced, accumulating a 1.93 ERA in very limited exposure. Even so, Stammen’s time in Washington, while measly, has been impressive, and Davey Johnson confirms that the righty is in the running for a spot in the bullpen for 2012.

Stammen’s outing, and the win, brought praise from the Nationals’ skipper, who is testing farm arms with an eye towards next year: “That is the second time I’ve seen him since the callup,” Johnson said following the game. “I’ve really been impressed with the way he is throwing the ball. I gave him a couple of days rest. He was sharp. I’m pleased with what I’m seeing.”

The Nationals win came after the Mets scored two runs in the fifth off Washington starter Chien-Ming Wang. Wang has struggled in the first inning of his outings this year, but he broke that mold on Tuesday, allowing a double and three singles to a line-up that had little trouble smacking the ball around the yard. In all, Wang pitched five complete innings, but he gave up nine hits — not a stellar outing from an arm that Nats hope will fill a hole in the back of the starting rotation next year.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: There’s a lot of hubbub in New York, and around baseball, about baseball’s decision that the Mets would not be allowed to wear NYPD and NYFD hats on 9/11 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of al-Qaeda’s U.S. attack. After the Mets loss to the Nationals on Monday, Mets manager Terry Collins said that, because of the controversy, his team was not focused on the game . . .

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