We’d be face-palming too if someone was taking a poll about our arms. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

The Stephen Strasburg Doomsday Clock doesn’t return until Wednesday, but a poll released today by The Washington Times is just throwing kerosene on the blaze that is the increasingly tone-deaf debate over the Nationals’ plans to end the young pitcher’s season once he reaches a certain number of innings.

In an apparently scientific—with statistical breakdowns and margins of error and everything—poll, the Times found that 47 percent of Americans favor Nats General Manager Mike Rizzo’s promise that Strasburg, who has been one of the top pitchers in all of Major League Baseball, will be shut down once he reaches his innings limit. (Could be 160. Could be 180. Rizzo hasn’t said for sure.)

With the most frequently reported innings limit set at 160, the most recent gaze at the Strasburg Doomsday Clock showed that the hard-throwing right-hander has just 14 and 2/3 innings left until Rizzo pries the ball from his hand. By more than a 4-to-1 ratio, Americans agree with Rizzo. Only 11 percent of respondents said Strasburg should stay in the rotation as the Nationals drive toward their first-ever playoff appearance.

The remaining 42 percent of people surveyed likely said something to the tune of, “I live in Nebraska. Who the hell is Stephen Strasburg and why are you calling me on the weekend?” The poll was conducted by JZ Analytics, which interviewed 800 U.S. residents between last Thursday and Saturday. The margin of error was 3.5 percent.

Breaking things down politically, Democrats are far more cautious with Strasburg’s surgically mended arm. Republicans and independents, the poll found, were more inclined toward letting Strasbug, who has racked up 183 strikeouts and a 2.85 earned run average en route to a 15-5 record, stay in.

I got a better idea for a breakdown, though. Perhaps instead of splitting Republicans and Democrats over a 23-year-old baseball player’s plans for September and October, the Times should disclose which MLB markets the poll respondents reside in. After all, if you were a supporter of a team that is not the Nationals and is jockeying for a playoff spot, wouldn’t you feel a lot more confident if one of the best pitchers in the game was sidelined?