(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Four and a half months into the 2012 Major League Baseball season, perhaps the most delightful story is that our very own Washington Nationals continue to defy their own history of mid-season letdowns by strengthening their grip on the sport’s best record.
But after 117 games, in which the team has compiled a 72-45 record, the moment Nationals fans have dreaded all year is within sight. Stephen Strasburg, owner of 2.90 earned run average and the major-league lead in strikeouts, is nearing his team-mandated innings limit, often rumored to be around 160 innings.
Strasburg, who starts tonight in San Francisco, has pitched 133 and 1/3 innings so far. And while some fans might want to see him continue—innings limit be damned—Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has been quite serious all year that when Strasburg hits the limit, his season will be done, even if the Nats make the playoffs for the first time since arriving in Washington in 2005.
Even Strasburg’s father is unsure about his son’s team-imposed ceiling, the Post’s Thomas Boswell writes in his latest column. But Rizzo has his reasons, Boz writes:
The answer takes a long time. It includes decades of statistics on rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery and how annual “innings load increases” have led to disastrous re-injury in the past.
It includes the view of the surgeon, Lewis Yocum, who’s performed all the operations on Nats pitchers in recent years. It is Yocum’s belief that pitchers who break down from premature returns from elbow surgery — sometimes ruining their shoulders, and their whole careers, rather then their new elbows — don’t usually do so during the first big stress year but rather the following season. That would be 2013 in Strasburg’s case.
So Strasburg’s impending shutdown is for the sake of the longterm. Before entering this season, Strasburg had thrown all of 92 innings in a big-league career that began in a 2010 frenzy that was promptly extinguished when he needed the operation.
The Nationals knew, from the season’s onset, that even if they made the playoffs, Strasburg would be unavailable for those critical October moments. Considering his performance this year, I’d estimate Strasburg has four, maybe five, starts remaining. To that end, DCist is rolling out the Stephen Strasburg shutdown meter based on the 160 inning redline.
Rumored innings limit: 160
Stephen Strasburg innings pitched to date: 133 and 1/3
Stephen Strasburg innings remaining: 26 and 2/3
Correction: Due to a reporting error, this post originally reported that Stephen Strasburg’s limit has been set at 160 innings. Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has never officially stated a hard ceiling; the 160-inning number comes from the length of Jordan Zimmermann’s 2011 season.
