HOUSTON — This setting, this moment, this pitcher. The patient, painstaking construction of an ace — it was all leading to Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday at Minute Maid Park, when the Washington Nationals needed a savior and turned to Stephen Strasburg. They trusted him because that is what they do.

They trusted in his promise in 2009, with the first overall pick in the draft. They trusted in his long-term future in 2012, when they benched him for the playoffs to protect his arm after surgery. They trusted in his commitment in 2016, when they gave him a $175 million contract.

At every step, Strasburg has rewarded the Nationals’ faith. He passed his biggest test of all on Tuesday night with a World Series performance for the ages against the Houston Astros: eight and a third innings, with two runs allowed in the first and none thereafter in a 7-2 victory.

“Stras went out there and had the game of his life,” said Max Scherzer, who will start Game 7 against Zack Greinke on Wednesday night. Later, he added, “The job he did for us, the effort, that’s just world class.”

World class in the World Series. This was the Nationals’ vision all along for Strasburg, though even the best prospects rarely get there. Eighteen pitchers have been chosen first over all in the draft, and Strasburg is the only one to start a World Series game for the team that chose him.

He earned that distinction in Game 2, when he pitched six innings, gave up two runs and beat Justin Verlander. He topped Verlander again in Game 6, and should be strongly considered for the World Series Most Valuable Player Award if the Nationals take Game 7.

It would be the first award for Strasburg — besides a Silver Slugger, of all things, in 2012 — and would seem overdue for a pitcher who reached 1,500 career strikeouts faster than anyone else ever had. He is 112-58 in his career, with a 3.17 earned run average.

“He’s been held to such a high standard,” said Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals’ veteran first baseman. “Even early in his career he was really good, and people for some reason wanted to say he wasn’t good at this or wasn’t good at that. If you look at his numbers since he’s been in the league, it’s unbelievable.

This kind of October will do that: a 1.98 earned run average, 47 strikeouts and just four walks in 36⅓ innings. Strasburg has matched a record shared by Randy Johnson (2001) and Francisco Rodriguez (2002) for victories in one postseason, with five, but even those pitchers had a loss mixed in. Strasburg is undefeated.

Strasburg’s career postseason E.R.A. is 1.46, the fourth lowest for pitchers with as many innings as he has thrown. The others are some of the most hallowed names in history: Mariano Rivera (0.70), Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Christy Mathewson (1.06).

Rivera had the cutter, Koufax the fastball and curveball, and Mathewson was famous for his “fadeaway” — essentially a screwball — at big moments. Strasburg has three devastating pitches — fastball, curve and changeup — but in the first inning Tuesday, he was telegraphing them with the way he moved his glove.

The team’s pitching coach, Paul Menhart, noticed, and Strasburg corrected the problem. He did not allow another hit until the fifth, when he allowed a single and a double. Then he faced Jose Altuve, an exceptional contact hitter, with one out, a one-run lead and runners at second and third. He struck him out on three pitches: a changeup, a curveball in the zone and a curveball in the dirt. That combination, Altuve said, has no equal.

“The best you can see in the game, probably,” he said. “Curveball with a lot of spin and depth, and a changeup that looks like a fastball and disappears.”

Strasburg got the next hitter, Michael Brantley, on a hard-hit grounder up the middle. The Nationals — again defying the perception that they ignore analytics — had shortstop Trea Turner stationed on the right side of second base. He snagged it on a backhand and flipped to first for the out. It was the last serious threat against Strasburg.

“He can get you in so many ways, sometimes changeup, sometimes curveball, sometimes he’s just attacking, sometimes he’s pitching backwards,” Turner said. “He can do it all. Just the competitiveness in the postseason has been crazy.”

Zimmerman said Strasburg had learned a few years ago to be stoic on the mound, to stop “letting the little things bother him,” and Strasburg, 31, agreed. Injuries have sometimes restricted him — he made 22 to 24 starts in 2015, 2016 and 2018 — but this year he led the National League in innings, with 209. His edge has grown ever sharper.

“The ups, the downs, it only makes you stronger mentally,” Strasburg said after Game 6. “I think, without those things, it would have been a lot harder to focus on what I can control out there.”

Strasburg acknowledged that he had matured from all the scrutiny, and had learned over time to be the best version of himself. How does he block out the noise?

“Remind myself what’s most important — it’s these guys in the clubhouse, it’s my two little girls, my wife and family, all those things,” he said. “You focus on your support system and everything else is just there.”

Game 6 of the World Series was just there on Tuesday, so Strasburg handled it. He was the first pitcher in his lifetime to work eight innings on the road when facing elimination in the World Series, and that was probably all he had to give.

“I emptied the tank tonight,” he said. “It’s trusting everybody next to you. It’s going to take all 25 of us.”

Sean Doolittle collected the last two outs in Game 6, and he would seem to be the most likely Nationals pitcher to close Game 7. Doolittle said he would not rule out Strasburg pitching again, which makes sense; historically great players are that way for a reason.

But if Strasburg has thrown his last pitch of 2019, he has done the Nationals proud. They never had a doubt.

“He definitely did his job tonight, and he doesn’t have anything to prove to anybody,” Doolittle said. “He doesn’t have anything to prove to us.”