With two outs in the sixth inning, Foster Griffin did something he hadn’t done all evening — walk a batter. It was a sign that he was fading as his outing neared its end Tuesday night.

Manager Blake Butera walked to the mound. Catcher Drew Millas patted Griffin on the back. Griffin put his head down, resigned to his fate. But after saying a few words, Butera walked off the mound and put his faith in Griffin to get the final out of the frame.

Griffin rewarded that faith, getting Mauricio Dubón to ground out to second base. Butera applauded from the dugout as the Nationals went on to beat the Braves 11-4 at Nationals Park.

“Felt really good about having him out there,” Butera said. “Just wanted to talk to him, see where he was at, make sure he was in a good spot. Just felt a lot of confidence with him on the mound.”

One night prior, in a tie game, Butera opted to remove Jake Irvin in the sixth inning. His logic was, with two left-handed hitters due up, lefty reliever PJ Poulin matched up better with that part of the lineup. That decision backfired when Drake Baldwin hit an RBI double that sparked a five-run frame.

Butera faced a similar predicament Tuesday. Griffin retired the first two batters in the sixth inning. Right-handed reliever Gus Varland was warming in the Nationals bullpen to face two Braves righties (Austin Riley and Dubón).

Griffin thought the manager was coming to remove him from the game. Dubón was 2-for-2 against him to that point. His teammates were split.

“Usually when you see Blake, you kind of just assume it’s a change,” right fielder James Wood said. “I got out to center field pretty much and J(acob) Y(oung) was like ‘Hey, go back.’”

“By the way he was walking, I kind of knew he wasn’t going to take him out,” first baseman Luis García Jr. said. “I think out of everybody that was there, I was only one that thought that.”

Griffin recalled Butera asking him if he wanted to face this guy. He replied, “Absolutely,” and joked that he didn’t give Butera a chance to respond. The decision paid dividends.

Griffin had a gameplan to get Dubón out. In his first two at-bats, Griffin felt Dubón was trying to swing at off-speed and breaking pitches away and go to the opposite field. So he threw a cutter inside that jammed him.

“More than anything, it’s ... showing our bullpen like ‘Hey, we got you,’” he said. “You’ve been working hard for us in this long stretch.”

Griffin, who signed a one-year, $5.5 million deal this offseason after spending three years in Japan, has been as advertised. His lack of velocity is balanced by his pitch sequencing and pinpoint command. To this point, he’s been the Nationals’ most consistent pitcher.

Of Griffin’s 96 pitches, 65 were strikes. He allowed three runs, including a pair of solo homers to Drake Baldwin in the third and Eli White in the fifth. Griffin joined Cade Cavalli as the only Nationals starter to complete six innings.

“He’s like an artist out there, painting and putting balls on the edges, mixing speeds and keeping all the hitters off balance,” Butera said.

He also outlasted Braves starter Reynaldo López, who found himself in an jam before he could get comfortable.

The first six runners reached base in the following order: walk, single, RBI single, walk, RBI walk and RBI single. Just like that the Nationals had a 3-0 lead. By the end of the first inning, they’d forced López to throw 46 pitches.

The Nationals have preached plate discipline from the beginning of spring training. So far, the Nationals rank 24th in walk percentage. They’re seventh in chase rate. There’s work to be done. But Tuesday’s performance as a group was a step in the right direction — the Nationals walked 12 times, a season-high.

“It’s big,” Wood said. “You can kind of see the results of that, making good decisions. I feel like that’s something we’ve been working on a lot and taking a lot of pride in.”

After Michael Harris II hit an RBI double in the second inning, Wood responded with his third homer of the homestand. All three have landed in the visitors’ bullpen but Tuesday’s homer was his hardest hit at 114.5 mph. The Braves, who wanted no part of Wood in the ensuing innings, walked him three more times.

Yet the Nationals struggled early on to turn their walks into runs. Washington finished 5-for-20 with runners in scoring position and left 11 runners on base.

“We had them on the ropes, didn’t realize capitalize in a couple situations where would’ve maybe broken it open a little bit earlier,” Butera said. “But that was the message: Stick with it, stick with it.”

In the fifth inning, the Braves intentionally walked Wood to face García with two outs in a one-run game. García hit an RBI single. They walked Wood to load the bases in the seventh. García hit a two-run double in a three-run frame.

“I definitely needed a game like this to regain the confidence that I always have,” García said.

Even in the eighth, the Nationals worked two walks. Then, Curtis Mead launched a three-run homer into the night sky to cap off a dominant victory for the Nationals.