Tommy John thinks the shutdown plan is complete B.S. also. It’s been 2 years since Strasburg had surgery. The guy is fine. This plan is stupid!

OK. No problem. Another genius heard from. I haven’t seen so many stupid people since I watched the Republican convention.

Go back to football, “Steve”.

What is the whole point of baseball to win the World Series right?

Play him until his arm falls off & if he hurts it again just fix it again.

Rizzo disgusts me as much as the fact I agree with Calcaterra this is a terrible decision disgusts me.

From my own literature search, the longest follow up period I found was a study where the average patient was followed for just under 7 years. 85% of the athletes were still doing well. Most of the studies were cut off around 4 years, with 90+% still competing I their chosen sport. No scientific study I saw dealt with innings/ workload.

This ultimately is based on best guess + the team’s and player’s investment.

If the Nats chose to continue pitching Strasburg, they would have to ignore all medical advice and disregard the clear history of young pitchers experiencing steep climbs in innings pitched. You know Strasburg only pitched 44 innings last year, right? Add in the TJ surgery and it’s inviting disaster to allow him to continue to pitch.

Yes, there are no guarantees. They could shut him down today and he could come up lame in Spring training. Hell, maybe he’ll get run over by a bus tomorrow. But the best you can do is make the most informed judgment and stick with it. That is what the Nationals are doing.

Strasburg has the potential to be one of the all-time greats. Are you really going to risk not just the Nationals season, but this young man’s entire career, for one shot at the post season? Really?

Yet Calcaterra writes: “Yeah, it’s totally crazy to think that the team is better with one of the best pitchers in baseball.”

Detwiler is 26, Lannan is 27 . . . they are separated by 18 months in age.

Here is where I’ll throw my impartiality hat back on . . . Lannan could still end up being a pretty good Major League starter. He is, in fact, capable of stringing together good starts for the Nats down the stretch. We’ll see.

The biggest reason it fleshed out the way it did was as Greg stated . . . Lannan had an option, Detwiler did not. Otherwise all things being equal I think the Nats would have elected to go with experience and come out of ST with Lannan in the rotation.

You just know I couldn’t sit by forever and not try to verify Boras’ “list”. And having just done the most cursory examination I’m already inclined to call bullshit on Boras.

My caveat: Baseball-Reference is a tad ambiguous when it comes to searching by age. The search function states “before Age 24″ but the search result then lists Age up to 24. This is likely the result of the mid-season cut-off for determining what ‘age’ a players season is, but never-the-less it represents some fine-combed semantics by Boras when his list is 12 the B-R list that is produced is 27 deep.

Obviously, to properly analyze this list, it would take more than just compiling it and posting it here, but I just wanted to present some context to Boras claim that there were only 12 pitchers between 1983-2003, before their age 24 season that pitched at least 600IP and that 11 of those 12 did not exceed 1,000 Innings after Age 30:

                                                                                     
Rk                Player     IP From   To   Age CG   W  L W-L%  ER  BB   SO  ERA ERA+
1          Dwight Gooden 1291.0 1984 1989 19-24 52 100 39 .719 379 379 1168 2.64  132
2        Bret Saberhagen 1066.2 1984 1988 20-24 40  69 55 .556 414 215  677 3.49  120
3            Steve Avery  918.0 1990 1994 20-24 10  58 39 .598 365 279  588 3.58  110
4            Greg Maddux  911.0 1986 1990 20-24 26  60 53 .531 373 319  540 3.68  106
5         Alex Fernandez  884.2 1990 1994 20-24 16  51 45 .531 381 289  592 3.88  107
6             Jim Abbott  847.0 1989 1992 21-24 20  47 52 .475 328 287  508 3.49  113
7          Ismael Valdez  821.2 1994 1998 20-24  8  52 40 .565 295 228  613 3.23  120
8    Fernando Valenzuela  790.1 1983 1985 22-24 35  44 37 .543 269 306  637 3.06  115
9           Mark Gubicza  788.2 1984 1987 21-24 17  49 48 .505 345 356  494 3.94  108
10        Javier Vazquez  768.1 1998 2001 21-24 10  41 43 .488 385 225  656 4.51  100
11         Roger Clemens  767.1 1984 1987 21-24 36  60 22 .732 263 216  694 3.08  141
12           Storm Davis  754.1 1983 1986 21-24 26  46 36 .561 308 254  419 3.67  109
13          Mark Buehrle  742.0 2000 2003 21-24 11  53 35 .602 306 189  416 3.71  124
14        Ramon Martinez  739.2 1988 1992 20-24 21  52 37 .584 273 268  586 3.32  107
15           John Smoltz  733.0 1988 1991 21-24 16  42 42 .500 303 272  523 3.72  103
16            Andy Benes  713.1 1989 1992 21-24  8  44 39 .530 264 220  542 3.33  112
17         Sidney Ponson  705.1 1998 2001 21-24 15  34 44 .436 384 242  433 4.90   94
18           Jose Rosado  692.2 1996 1999 21-24 11  35 43 .449 324 228  469 4.21  115
19             Jose Rijo  675.0 1984 1989 19-24  6  39 44 .470 290 321  601 3.87   98
20        Pedro Martinez  671.0 1992 1996 20-24  7  48 31 .608 253 239  665 3.39  124
21            Brad Radke  652.2 1995 1997 22-24  9  42 40 .512 325 152  397 4.48  108
22             Mike Witt  650.2 1983 1985 22-24 17  37 34 .521 278 257  453 3.85  106
23            Tom Gordon  649.2 1988 1992 20-24  8  44 46 .489 284 334  611 3.93  101
24           Tom Glavine  646.0 1987 1990 21-24  8  33 41 .446 308 214  323 4.29   89
25         Ryan Dempster  639.1 1998 2001 21-24  4  37 35 .514 328 340  541 4.62   93
Rk                Player     IP From   To   Age CG   W  L W-L%  ER  BB   SO  ERA ERA+
26         Sid Fernandez  626.2 1983 1987 20-24  8  43 30 .589 238 279  585 3.42  106
27          Kevin Appier  623.1 1989 1992 21-24 12  41 30 .577 215 195  445 3.10  129

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool UsedGenerated 9/3/2012.

Also, here is a list only 8 deep, using the same search criteria as above except setting the age at ’23′:

                                                                                    
Rk            Player     IP From   To   Age CG SHO  W  L W-L%  ER  BB   SO  ERA ERA+
1      Dwight Gooden 1172.2 1984 1988 19-23 52  19 91 35 .722 341 332 1067 2.62  134
2    Bret Saberhagen  806.0 1984 1987 20-23 31   8 55 39 .585 304 156  506 3.39  126
3        Steve Avery  766.1 1990 1993 20-23  9   5 50 36 .581 297 224  466 3.49  112
4     Alex Fernandez  714.1 1990 1993 20-23 12   3 40 38 .513 308 239  470 3.88  104
5        Greg Maddux  674.0 1986 1989 20-23 18   5 45 38 .542 282 248  396 3.77  102
6      Ismael Valdez  647.2 1994 1997 20-23  6   2 41 30 .577 218 162  491 3.03  127
7         Jim Abbott  636.0 1989 1991 21-23 13   4 40 37 .519 263 219  378 3.72  106
8        Storm Davis  600.1 1983 1985 21-23 24   4 37 24 .607 246 205  323 3.69  107

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool UsedGenerated 9/3/2012.

My biggest point is that the Nats of course want a healthy Strasburg going forward, but they also need a Strasburg is happy to be a Nat and does not feel he is being rooked out of a opportunity of a lifetime, an opportunity that he earned. Again, a player’s psyche is just as important as his arm. It is why I would not completely shut him down for the season in the second week of September if still healthy.

because most people can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s easy to question the nats when neither decision is guaranteed to protect him.

The anger just standard internet anonymity crap

“The Nats are better with Strasburg, his 15-6 record and 2.94 ERA. But they aren’t enormously better. In his last 13 starts, the Nats are 7-6 and his ERA in that span (3.80) is only fourth out of five in the rotation.”

I think you’re misreading his tone. This isn’t an attack on critics of the decision. It’s a rallying cry for fans who’re worried about their team’s chances without the young ace. I don’t always love Boswell, but I really liked this piece.

The above quotes are from a Washington Times article today. The GM, manager, and player have apparently not discussed this face-to-face recently. Sounds to me like Strasburg might fight Rizzo on it. He’s a competitor, so of course he is going to want the ball every 5 days and will be very upset if he gets left off the postseason roster. Anyone would. This is a dynamic that really bears watching the next few weeks. How they handle Strasburg emotionally is at least as important as how they handle his arm.

I still think they would be better off having him skip every other start, keep his arm warm, and let him pitch in the playoffs.

Boras does a study to support what he thinks will serve his client’s (and, indirectly, his) interests. In this case, his study supports sitting Strasburg, to improve the chances of Strasburg having a long, lucrative career. That is Boras’ job.