Here's the story from the NY Post yesterday..............
Stephen Strasburg starts tonight in San Francisco against Tim Lincecum. Yet what overshadows an intriguing matchup is an ever-present tick-tock in a sport without a clock.
For there is no bigger story in the game now than the controversy surrounding the Nationals’ plans to send Strasburg on an early vacation, likely in the first or second week of September. Washington officials have stated emphatically for months that when they feel Strasburg has had enough — believed to be at about 160-170 innings (he is at 133 1/3 now) — he will be shut down until spring training.
In June, when I spoke to Washington GM Mike Rizzo, he emphatically said the decision “is not changing … To ask [Strasburg] to throw 200 innings now [after Tommy John surgery and just 24 innings in 2011], that is not a prudent way to do business with a 23-year-old, top-of-the-rotation starter we plan to have for a long time. It’s going to be painful, and we are going to take grief. But I will not shy away from it. I am the caretaker of this organization for the long haul.”
Rizzo was right: The grief is growing as D(Dismissal)-Day nears. The furor is going to far exceed the Joba Rules brouhaha. There is a large bloc — growing louder by the day — wondering how in the name of Bob Gibson a franchise that has not made the playoffs since 1981 when they were the Montreal Expos can decommission its perfectly healthy ace based on theory, but no definitive facts.
Although I disagree with what the Nationals are doing, I certainly see sound reasons for forging this plan.
I remember then-Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson telling me more than a decade ago something that has always stuck: You can’t ask someone who has trained as a sprinter to run a marathon — meaning you are promoting physical breakdown if you push an athlete to take his body way beyond wherever he has trained to do, especially an athlete that already has broken down from usage.
Plus, cooler heads always should be thinking big picture over being a slave to the moment. After all, we all remember how Johan Santana absolutely had to throw those career-high 134 pitches — damn the shoulder surgery — so the Mets could get their first no-hitter. Since then, of course, Santana has been to the DL and has a 7.98 ERA, second worst in the majors (minimum 40 innings) to Derek Lowe (8.13), who was released by the Indians and signed by the Yankees.
Then there is the case of Jordan Zimmerman, whom the Nationals babied to 161 innings last season following Tommy John surgery and has emerged to be Strasburg’s equal or superior. In fact, even without Strasburg, Zimmerman and Gio Gonzalez would give the Nats as good a 1-2 starting punch as any NL team, certainly better than Atlanta, the team Washington is trying to hold off to capture the NL East. Plus in Edwin Jackson, Ross Detwiler and John Lannan, the Nats have more than enough to round out a rotation.