The National Concern

As the season starting last week the Washington Nationals were able to open up the season with a 2-1 win over the Chicago Cubs with star pitcher Stephen Strasburg on the mound.  Washington D.C sports fans felt a sense of reassurance about the team that has been predicted to at least contend for a wild card spot this season.  My twitter TL exploded with tweets and cheers of excitement reading, "Nats win" and "Let's go Nats" (follow me @devinhere by the way).  It was a good feeling for a fan base on the heels of disappointing consecutive seasons from the Redskins, Wizards, and the Capitals.  As I sat back and enjoyed the thought that, maybe we can finally have a team that over achieves or at least lives up to expectation, there was one thing that bothered me.  What about Strasburg?

In 2010, Steven Strasburg was having a phenomenal rookie season, he was living up to all the hype and all the speculation.  He was pumping life back into the fan base and bringing excitement to the team, all of his starts were filling all the seats in Nationals Park.  Then the typical Washington cloud of gloom made it's way over Nationals Park when the team announced that Strasburg had a torn UCL in his throwing elbow and would require Tommy John Surgery.   Three months into his career Strasburg was dealing with one of the most serious injuries a pitcher can have and was facing an uphill battle for a surgery that typically requires 12 to 18 months worth of rehab.

Remarkably Strasburg had an extremely succesful rehab and returned to the Nationals in the 2011 season to start 5 games, looking just as strong as he did before the injury.  Fans were able to retain hope for their star pitcher and look forward to seeing him be a keep piece in what is hopefully a season that becomes a playoff run in the 2012 season.  In the off season there was a lot of discussion on what precautions the team would make to avoid further complications with Strasburg's UCL.  Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo made it very clear that the team planned to limit the amount of innings Strasburg pitched this season, similar to how they limited Jordan Zimmermann who went through the same experience the season before.

The problem is Zimmermann's 160 inning pitch limit led to him being shut down for the season in late August.  If the Nationals plan to play in the playoffs this year it means they will need Strasburg's services in to at least October.  There are 162 games in an major league season, with the nationals 5 man rotation that means each starter is expected to pitch approximately 32 games(162/5=32).  Take away a few games assuming they are going to give Strasburg a lesser workload, let's say the a more reasonable number of starts for Strasburg is 28.  Which means if Strasburg is to make the entire season and still adhere to his strict pitch count he needs to average a little under 6 innings a game (162/28=5.786).

Obviously team manager Davey Johnson and G.M Rizzo haven't paid much attention to this stat, because Strasburg opened the season pitching 7 innings.  Obviously I'm not insisting that the answer is to simply sit him down every 5.786 innings but at the moment I really can't see the plan.  Precautions must be made to assure that this team is able to compete down the stretch.  Why not start the season with Strasburg in the bullpen for the first month or so?  Or why not keep John Lannan on the roster and have him alternate in and out of the starting rotation with Strasburg?  Ideally, I think the whole pitch limit thing should be thrown out the window contingent on where the team is sitting as the 160 inning limit approaches.  We'll see what happens with this one.