Williams recaps Nats' 6-2 loss to Braves

There won't be a sweep, but the Nationals will head out on their 11-game road trip with an eight-game lead over the Braves, needing a combination of Nats wins or Atlanta losses equaling 10 to clinch the National League East.

Matt Williams' team might very well return home with the division crown locked up.

Today, the Nats dropped a 6-2 ballgame to Atlanta, with Aaron Harang stymieing them over seven innings. Stephen Strasburg allowed three runs over six innings, striking out eight and walking none, but the Braves turned a scoreless ballgame after four into a 6-1 lead after seven.

Here are comments from Williams after the loss:

On Strasburg: "I thought he was pretty good. He gave up the homer to B.J. (Upton), and then Justin (Upton) hit a ball, good piece of hitting, trying to move a guy from second to third, and Rochie (Adam LaRoche) dove for it but it went off his glove. Then the ball, the pitch (to Christian) Bethancourt, it's probably down and off the plate, but he did a good job of serving it to right. Other than that, I thought he pitched pretty well today."

On Jerry Blevins, who allowed three runs in one-third of an inning: "We're going to continue to give him the ball. Today, he gave up a base hit to the pitcher and then a broken-bat hit. Then you get to the middle of their order again. They're tough on anybody. But it's a situation where we're going to have to continue to give him the baseball in those types of situations. We lined it up pretty good to face lefties. It didn't happen today, but hopefully next time he goes out, it'll happen for him."

On Rafael Soriano's outing, in which he allowed two hits in a scoreless eighth inning: "Better down angle. Threw some really good sliders today. Had depth to them. So the mechanical stuff he's working on was much better today. (Ryan) Doumit's ball got in on him a little bit. Good placement down the line there. And then he battled through the inning. But I thought he was better down in the strike zone today."

On how Soriano will be used going forward: "We'll see. We'll see how the games play out, who's available, who isn't. And continue to do what we're doing. See how it goes."

On how he views this series overall: "I think that two out of three is good. Winning a series is good. They swung it really good today, but overall in the series, if we can win two from these guys out of three, that's pretty good."

On Harang: "Today was pretty tough peeping out there. The shadows are tough, breaking ball especially when you have shadows like that, and change of speed. And he can do that really well, regardless of shadow or not. He just changes speed and throws strikes to both sides of the plate and any time in the count. He's difficult."

On if the shadows the teams dealt with today could be an issue in afternoon games in the postseason: "Probably not in New York the next four days. That's all we're concerned about."