Astacio tosses two-hit shutout for Nats

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He's the wily veteran of the Washington Nationals pitching staff, a 36-year-old right-hander whose better days are clearly behind him but who still has a gem in him every once in a while.

Pedro Astacio decided to bring out his best last night, and the result was a thing of beauty: a two-hit shutout of the Atlanta Braves in a briskly played 5-0 Nationals victory before 24,036 at RFK Stadium.

It was Astacio's first complete game in four years and the first by any Washington pitcher this season.

And it couldn't have come at a better time for the Nationals, who were reeling from unsightly losses the last two days and desperately needed a big-time performance from someone on their beleaguered pitching staff.

"Our best pitching performance of the year," catcher Brian Schneider said.

Astacio (3-2) was the man for the job last night, deftly shutting down a Braves lineup that was without Andruw Jones yet still entered with the second-best batting average in the National League. He didn't walk a batter, struck out five, retired the first 14 batters he faced and needed only 89 pitches (66 strikes) to record the first complete game by a Washington pitcher since Livan Hernandez went the distance in a 4-3 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Sept. 20, 2005.

"It was a superb effort on his part from the first pitch of the ballgame to the last pitch of the ballgame," manager Frank Robinson said. "He was in complete control the entire ballgame."

Which was a surprising development in itself because Astacio had been anything but spectacular in his eight previous starts since returning from a three-month stint on the disabled list, carrying a 5.56 ERA into last night's outing.

The veteran hadn't thrown a complete game since 2002, when he was with the New York Mets and pitched a two-hit shutout against the Los Angeles Dodgers to establish his career low-hit game.

Did Astacio remember that one?