"Jordan Zimmermann doesn't carry the same cachè, didn't sign the same type of monster contract and certainly doesn't pack a stadium the way the Washington Nationals' best-known right-handed pitcher does. He's not Stephen Strasburg, and that's just fine.

But in his first full season of major league work after August 2009 Tommy John surgery, Zimmermann has evolved into a must-see starter every five days in his own right. The way his mid-90s fastball moves, his curveball drops and his slider breaks, it's all an impressive package to watch each time out — at least for five or six innings.

For the first 90-100 pitches of Zimmermann's starts in a mostly dominant season, he cruises. He gets batters to react like Arizona's Chris Young Tuesday night: staring at Zimmermann, looking back at his bat, staring back out at right-hander as he walks back to the dugout, baffled by what he's seen.

And then, as has happened on a handful of occasions, he reaches his breaking point. Zimmermann makes one errant pitch, sometimes two, and they decide the game. The 25-year-old hardly gets any run support — entering Tuesday, the offense averaged 2.7 runs per start while he's in the game — and he leaves a tough-luck loser.

Tuesday night the difference between maintaining the scoreless duel he had going with Ian Kennedy and the 2-0 loss was a 92-mph fastball."