Strasburg strikes out 14 as Nationals blank Phillies

The eighth pitch of David Buchanan's night Tuesday sailed not only inside but behind the legs of the lefthanded-hitting Bryce Harper. Two pitches later, Harper crushed a hanging curveball to the deepest part of Citizens Bank Park, the National League MVP front-runner marveling at it for a few seconds before rounding the bases.

This sequence began another Washington Nationals win over the Phillies, baseball's first team to 90 losses after a 4-0 defeat. The Phillies had not lost 90 games in a season since 2000, and need to win seven of their final 16 games to avoid the franchise's first 100-loss season in 54 years.

Harper's home run, his first of two in a four-RBI night, was all the run support needed for Stephen Strasburg. The former top overall draft pick dominated the Phillies, allowing merely one hit and recording a blistering 14 strikeouts over eight innings. He issued only one walk.

Cody Asche's single to right field to lead off the fifth inning marked the Phillies' lone hit as they were shut out for the 12th time this year. Strasburg threw 105 pitches - 77 strikes - before he was pulled.

"He was dominant tonight. Filthy change-up," Phillies interim manager Pete Mackanin said. "That's probably one of the best - if not the best - pitched games I've seen all year."

Meanwhile, Harper continued to bolster his strong MVP case. Seven innings after his solo shot off Buchanan, he added a two-run home run off Adam Loewen. His eighth home run in 11 games and third of the series was his NL-leading 39th of the year. The 22-year-old rightfielder tallied a run-scoring single in the third inning and walked in the sixth. His .338 average also leads the league.

Despite the ugly first-inning matchup against Harper, Buchanan turned in his best major-league outing since July. The 26-year-old righthander allowed only two runs on five hits over six innings, the first time in four starts he left an outing with a better ERA (8.49) than when he started (9.11).

Buchanan said the pitch that sailed behind Harper was a fastball that got away. Of the curveball Harper launched an estimated 435 feet out to center field, he simply left a curveball up and Harper "went with it," Buchanan said.

Said Harper, "It just got away from him a little bit. Just tried to stay on that curveball. They threw me a 2-0 curveball [on Monday], so I was trying to sit on it as best I could. Got it and watched it a little bit just because he threw it behind me."

Overall, Buchanan pitched well. It was the first of his 12 starts in which he logged six innings and allowed two earned runs or fewer. This was the second time this season he was on the wrong end of a dominant Strasburg start.

"Regardless of the team I faced today, it was really about just going out there and competing," Buchanan said. "The way things have been going, I really wanted to go out there and pitch with confidence."

Strasburg, 27, became the first pitcher to strike out 14 Phillies in a game since Curt Schilling did so in 2003 as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The total matched Strasburg's career high that he set in his June 2010 major-league debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He struck out 13 in his last start, a loss to the New York Mets.

Odubel Herrera struck out in each of his three at-bats against Strasburg. Darnell Sweeney, Andres Blanco and Brian Bogusevic each fell victim twice. Every batter in the Phillies' lineup struck out at least once.

The Phillies close out their series with the Nationals on Wednesday before a day off Thursday and the start of a three-game series in Atlanta on Friday.

"We certainly don't want to lose 100," Mackanin said. "If it happens, it happens. But I just want the guys to keep battling, keep competing, not to avoid 100 losses but just to win every game they play."