Often disparaged but monstrously good, Stephen Strasburg gave up a leadoff triple to J.T. Realmuto in the fifth inning of a scoreless game against Miami on Wednesday afternoon. Instant crisis.

Immediately, as if clicking off the cruise control on a Ferrari and stomping the accelerator, Strasburg overpowered the next two Marlins for swinging strikeouts, then got a weak flyball from the pitcher to strand the runner. To lead off the bottom half of the inning, Strasburg hit the first pitch into the right-center bleachers for a home run.

“Sometimes it’s just your day,” Nationals Manager Dusty Baker said after Strasburg’s six-hit shutout in a 4-0 win to sweep three games from the Marlins.

[Matinee idol: Strasburg blows away Miami]

That’s wrong. Sometimes it’s your 26 months. That’s how long Strasburg has pitched — and especially won — at an incredible level. Since June 2015, when he returned from the disabled list, the Nats’ record in his 60 starts is 47-13. That’s a .783 winning percentage.

A little perspective: In the final five great years of Sandy Koufax’s career, the Dodgers’ winning percentage in his starts was .746.

Strasburg isn’t Koufax. But except for the Nats themselves, few seem to grasp what he actually is, what he has become: a fierce competitor, a pitcher who rises to the game situation and a winner. In fact, his improvement, from remarkable to truly elite — becoming just who he was predicted to be — has happened before our eyes but in seasons with slight imperfections or DL trips that kept him from Cy Young Award contention and the appreciation he has worked eight years to earn.

[Frustrated Harper is ‘a long ways from running’]

“Can’t see him very well as an outfielder. But I got a chance to face him in a [simulated game] when we were both on the DL,” Jayson Werth said. “He was rested, healthy, throwing hard. I realized one thing that maybe he doesn’t know.

“He’s scary.

“He’s big. He hides the ball. It’s explosive in the zone. Especially to a right-handed hitter — he ran one in on me, and I said, ‘Oh, [expletive].’ I don’t know if I can even pick that up every time,” Werth said. “He’s just a big, hairy, scary, furry animal out there.”

That 47-13 understates what Strasburg has done when he’s in working order. Late in 2016, before a torn pronator tendon was diagnosed, Strasburg lost three straight starts, allowing 19 runs in 11⅔ innings. Except for those, his record in his past 57 healthy starts would be 34-7 with a 2.55 ERA — and the Nats are 47-10.

Even the Nats find this record hard to fathom.

[Bog: Some Montreal fans wish D.C. would leave their Expos alone]

“He’s spit the hook on some losses — three or four,” Baker said of games when the Nats scored after he left.

Perhaps the bitterest irony of Strasburg’s career is his injuries. “Just stay healthy. Back off. Just be smart,” Werth said, aware that pundits often have intimated that Strasburg is soft or even a hothouse plant. “For years he was trying to prove he wasn’t what [people] said he was. He pushed too hard.

“He was grinding when he should have stopped grinding. He’s gotten schooled up. His confidence is slowly. . . ” Werth said, raising his hand gradually, “coming along.”

What happens if he ever gets as confident as he probably should be already?

“He’s really [expletive] good,” General Manager Mike Rizzo snapped when shown the numbers over those past 60 starts. Rizzo gets exasperated on a regular basis since Strasburg’s personality, toughness or performance has been impugned for his entire eight-year career.

“If you just took the name off his numbers and asked, ‘Who is this?’ people would probably say ‘Bob Gibson or Don Drysdale,’ ” Rizzo said, citing two intimidating right-handed strikeout pitchers in the Hall of Fame.

In fact, Strasburg’s career winning percentage (80-45, .640) edges into the top 25 in the past 100 years. Nolan Ryan was only 32 games over .500 for his career. Also, Strasburg’s ERA+ of 127 (27 percent better than league average) nudges into the top 30 in the past century for starters. Gibson’s figures are .591 and 127, Drysdale’s .557 and 121, so the comparisons, so far, are apt.

What Strasburg lacks is a defining season or postseason. He has never won more than 15 games, although he owns a strikeout title. He has missed two of the Nats’ three postseasons. He is exceptional when he pitches (sixth-best ERA in MLB of 2.90 this year) but he has seldom pitched enough innings, piled up enough accolades, to satisfy those who nag about his potential or hype when he was first drafted.

In a way, the attacks on him — or the Nats for his 2012 shutdown — may have made him even more inward, private and focused. “Stras doesn’t chirp about anything — good or bad” in the dugout, Baker said. When Baker arrived, he said that “making Strasburg happier” was a goal.

“I haven’t accomplished it yet,” said Baker, whose team is 36-11 in Strasburg’s starts, making Baker the happy one.

“Strasburg never shows any emotion. He didn’t even smile after he hit the home run. So you never know what he’s thinking on the mound either or what he’s going to throw,” Tanner Roark said. “He’s got four five-star pitches that he can throw any time in any count. But it’s that laserlike focus that’s amazing.

“I asked him, ‘Do you even enjoy your own walk-up song?’ ” Roark said.

“Don’t know what it is,” Strasburg told Roark. “But I wouldn’t hear it anyway.”

Almost everything the public thinks it knows about Strasburg was either wrong from the beginning or has become incorrect with time. Strasburg does not have a durability problem. Since his team-mandated shutdown in 2012, he has made 134 starts over the past five seasons, only one less than Clayton Kershaw, the same number as Felix Hernandez and more than Jake Arrieta (130), Johnny Cueto (128) or Adam Wainwright (126) and not far behind David Price (139). He’s tied for 30th in starts over that time. So an average team has one pitcher this durable.

Strasburg does not lack competitiveness. In games in which he gets little run support (zero to two runs) or large support (six or more runs), he has a career ERA around 3.60. But in the kind of games that demand gutting out a close win, when he gets medium run-support of three, four or five runs, he’s 32-10 with a 2.40 ERA.

Strasburg does not fade as games get deeper. In fact, he gets better. With every 25 pitches he throws, his on-base-plus-slugging percentage versus trends down: .705, .629, .590, .600 and .590 from his 101st pitch onward. It’s the same pattern with batting average. Strasburg just gets tougher deeper: .243, .224, .216, .220 and .190 after pitch 100.

On Wednesday, Strasburg threw 110 pitches in the second shutout of his career. No, he doesn’t have many complete games. Few do these days. But he’s as likely to snap your neck for seven innings, the modern complete game, as just about anybody. Giancarlo Stanton went 0 for 4 against Strasburg, though with a 114-mph groundout that Trea Turner may remember for a while.

In his way, Strasburg symbolizes this entire team. The Nats lead the NL in runs. They are the only NL team since World War II to have three of the top four ERA starters in the league — Max Scherzer (2.21), Gio Gonzalez (2.40) and Strasburg. And they have gotten a 1.88 ERA from the top five men in a revamped bullpen, with 16 of 17 save conversions, since the All-Star Game.

All of that is lovely — the Nats’ excellence in the face of hardship, all the fancy stats and Strasburg’s dazzling 60-start run. It’s real and of value but unfinished art.

Can they do it in October? Especially the big, hairy, scary, furry animal who needs to take ’em home?

For more by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.