Heels new fav player
 

Stephen Strasburg, RHP, Nationals (Triple-A Syracuse)

Wednesday's stats: 6 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 7 K

It's a waste of time to talk about how well Strasburg pitched, and it's a waste of time to act like him delivering six no-hit innings has any effect on his big league timetable, which remains on course for an early June debut. We can have fun with numbers, though--and share that so far, opposing batters are 14-for-116 (.121) against Strasburg, with two doubles, eight walks and 40 strikeouts. My favorite split? Batters leading off an inning against the uber-prospect are 0-for-31. It's really all the fun we can have at this point. You know, other than watching him pitch.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...rticleid=10863

Jiminez vs. Lincecum today at 4pm on MLBN. Should be a good one.

Four hit shutout for Ubaldo. Season ERA is down to 0.78.....sick.

Missed this from a couple of weeks ago. Got my Strasburg jerseys all set, both home and away. ;):rolleyes:

June 8th

:tro:

Pretty nice that they are taking him from AAA to AAAA by feeding him the Pirates and their .237 team batting average.

Don't tell the Cubs that the Pirates suck. They are now 1-6 against them this season.

Honestly the Nationals seem to be making all the right moves with SS including bringing him up to face some of the weaket lineups in baseball for his first 6 or 7 starts. They resisted the pressure to start the season with him, effectively buying time and getting another year of control over his contract situation. They also have seemingly brought him up the ladder rapid enough to let him get some experience without too much stress. He will have plenty of that once he gets to the majors as he is going to be expected to pitch better than any other rookie maybe ever has. That isn't saying that he will or wont but the expectation levels for this guy are extreme.

Yeah, I originally gave him 8 starts before his arm falls off. They've done a good job, he might make it to his third season before it falls off. Either way it was happening at some point.

Why would you say that? The guy has flawless mechanics. And he is not a Met. 2 positive attributes

The human body isn't designed to throw over 100 mph and he was doing it at a young age, the perfect recipe for injury.

Well at least Dusty Baker doesn't get a chance to get a hold of him, but Jim Riggleman on the other hand is hardly an upgrade.

Uh Nolan Ryan? How hard you throw has nothing to do with injuries. Not to mention he is neither young nor has he been overworked. Until he got into shape and straightened out his mechanics he was very ordinary which is why he landed at a B level school like SD State. While the act of throwing a baseball overhand is unnatural, many more injuries are caused either by overuse by ignorant managers, poor mechanics or overrelience on breaking balls.

Riggleman is on a short leach. It is incredible that teams continue to hire Baker, he makes the same mistakes everywhere he goes...

Ryan was a hard thrower with amazing durability but his fastest pitch ever was 100.9 and he did that at the age of 27, not as a college kid. He also wasn't regularly hitting 100+ like Strasburg was last year. The real question will be whether the kid can drop back to 97-98 and be as effective. So far in the minors it has been no problem but if he has to rely on a 103 mph fastball to do well in the big leagues his shelf life will be short as a starting pitcher.

Criticism of my new favorite player and savior of the Nats - blasphemy ;) :rolleyes:

How do you know what his fastest pitch ever was? There was no public radar readings in the late 60/early 70's when Ryan started. Your inference that somehow Ryan was not throwing that fast when he was Strausburgs age is faulty. Ryan had already pitched over 200 major league innings at the same age that SS is going to debut at as well. There is zero evidence that throwing a baseball a certain mph causes injuries. In fact the fastball is generally considered to be the kindest and most straight forward pitch a player can throw.

I'm not sure why you think that Nolan Ryan wasnt regularly throwing as fast as SS. As for SS, he doesnt rely on throwing the ball over 100 mph. I'm not sure where you got that impression. The guy throws very hard but lives in the 95-98 range with very good breaking balls, a hard slider and slurve. He has even mixed in a little changeup though it may not be ready for too much MLB exposure.

That may be true on Ryan, I know he hit 100.9 in 1974 but I don't know what sort of radars they had before that, so maybe he was throwing harder earlier. He was a freak though, we'll have to see if Strasburg is.

So far he is throwing in that range in the minors and if he can do that in the majors and get away with it he will be very good. In college he was throwing much harder and was hitting and exceeding 100 with regularity. If he has to do that in the majors I think he is in trouble.

In college he was pitching once a week and I find it hard to believe he was throwing faster than he is now. The fact is that some places soup up the radar guns. You are misinterpreting what makes a good pitcher. He isnt great because he throws so fast. He is great because he throws so fast accurately.

I always thought it was the guys who relied on curveballs and breaking balls that have the most arm trouble. Didnt really equate it with the fastball.

Seriously there is zero % chance that he wont be successful in the MLB because of his stuff. You dont have to be a grizzled scout to see that. The key is can he stretch it out to 200+ innings per year? He has been throwing 100 innings a year and low leverage innings at that since he allows so few baserunners. Obviously in the majors the talent level is much higher than the majority of what he has faced. But the dominance that he has displayed in Spring training and the upper levels of the minors is rare. There simply aren't any cases of a pitcher this dominant not making it in the majors without injury issues. ALL pitchers are injury risks as none of them escape not getting hurt at least occasionally. There are some that are critical of his mechanics yet those guys were also pessimistic on Lincecum and K Rod as well. We have seen how that has worked out.

I expect SS to immediatly be a top 10 pitcher in the league (stuff wise). Once he's able to throw 9 innings he'll be a top 3 pitcher immediately.

LOL There isnt any such thing as a 9 inning pitcher anymore, Halladay the freak notwithstanding...

Because his innings will be limited for at least this and next year it is hard to put him in the top 10. There are a lot of really good pitchers right now.

In no particular order off the top of my head
Halladay
Jimenez
Linecum
Sabathia
Santana
Wainwright
Carpenter
Kershaw
Lee
Hernandez
Lester

thats a tough 11 to crack

Lots of good NL pitchers on that list!!!

thats why I said "stuff wise". Obviously if he's given a 80 pitch count or 6 inning limit, he cant come close to those 11, but as far as his stuff, I think he'll immediately belong on that list. Once his endurance is up he'll be near the top.

How crazy, after this draft, Nationals will have Nolan Ryan re-incarnated and Mickey Mantle re-incarnated (that 17 year old kid). Nationals sure picked great years to finish with the worst record in baseball!

Harper plays C now and may be moved to a corner OF position. Washington has some pieces. Drew Storen the #10 pick last year has already been called up and is a set up man and will be the future closer. They have a 5 star catching prospect named Derek Norris that should be ready mid year 2011. They also have Danny Espinosa who is a 4 star SS who may be ready to start next year. Jordan Zimmerman might be back late this year and Ryan Zimmerman is already one of the best 3b in baseball. They arent that far from being good.

Dusty Baker Foundation: "Been Ruining Pitchers Since 1993"

This reminds me of the dumba$$ on ESPN that claimed Bob Feller threw 115 mph. "I work at Cooperstown, and its darn true!"

And here I didn't even know Cooperstown had a team. I always though Feller played for Cleveland.

Stephen Strasburg
It was a year ago when Strasburg was drafted and tomorrow, he'll make his major-league debut. Since he first burst onto the national stage featuring a 100-plus mph fastball and secondary pitches that alone would have made him the first overall pick, we've had armchair biomechanists predicting breakdowns using every letter in the alphabet. The simple fact is that I don't know, you don't know, and the Nationals don't know either, but neither do these experts. While Strasburg could be the next Joel Zumaya or Mark Prior—and would that be so bad?—he could just as easily be the next Nolan Ryan or Jamie Moyer. I asked Dr. Glenn Fleisig if velocity could predict the forces on an arm and he answered with the following:

"Faster ball velocity is not always associated with more force on the shoulder and elbow. From Isaac Newton, force = mass * acceleration (not velocity). The first part of the equation is "mass" which, in this case, is the mass of the ball and throwing arm. The second part is acceleration—and this is a function of mechanics. Pitchers with better mechanics can produce ball velocity with less acceleration and force produced at their shoulder and elbow (by producing more energy and better coordination throughout their body)."


http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...rticleid=11101