Wednesday, April 21, 2010
He's Ready
Total for the year: 12.1 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 17 K, 0.73 ERA. Enough of this Scott Olsen / Garrett Mock nonsense. It's time for the Strasburg Era to begin.
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13 comments:
You got a spare $25M to give to the team, in order for it to make financial sense to bring him up now?
More important, who's the answer to this Jason Marquis foolishness. And the Willie Harris/Willy Taveras/Justin Maxwell foolishness? And the Stan Kasten foolishness...?
Todd, you hit the nail on the head. What is 6-8 extra starts going to do for the team? Make them a 75 win team instead of a 70 win team? Is that worth a losing him to free agency a year sooner?
Nate, I agree Taveras is crap, but there's nothing wrong with a Harris/Maxwell platoon. Harris' .208 average unimpressive, but if you look beyond that his .932 OPS is anything but unimpressive. Similarly, Maxwell has looked pretty good so far. All in all, it's a pretty solid RF platoon.
Ugh, 1st Will - as long as Strasburg isn't up for 20 days his FA status is unchanged.
Which brings me to #2 delaying bringing him up till the end of May would ensure he doesn't qualify as a Super Two and get 4 arbitration year instead of 3, which will likely cost the Nats about $6-9M, maybe $12M or so, depending on who you believe, but not $25M.
Eric is right--Todd's numbers assume that he's going to be awarded more than twice as much more than any player's ever gotten ever in arbitration. At most he's going to cost maybe 8-10 more than he would otherwise, which is still a steal, especially when you factor in the lost revenue making him pitch in the minors when he could be packing them in here in DC.
Also, if he gets sent down at the end of the year, which we're all told he will, his clock will pause there again.
So really if you believe that there's a hard cap on the number of pro innings he'll pitch, every AA inning is just an inning taken away from his major league quota.
Regardless, we're talking about Michael Jordan here. The most important clock is the clock between now and when he's too old to play baseball anymore.
You don't waste prime years of his career in the sticks when he could be shutting out the Phillies in the Bank and taking the whole baseball world by storm.
I don't give a hoot how much it costs the Lerners, but I do care when he becomes a free agent. So can you tell me for certain that if Strasburg starts for the Nats five days from now and stays in the majors until he reaches his innings limit for the year, he will not become a free agent (and likely head to the Yankees, BoSox, A's, Dodgers, or Mets) a year earlier than he would if they wait to bring him up until the beginning of June?
If the only difference is money in his first arbitration year, then you're probably right that they can make up the alot of the difference in attendance -- especially if we're going to see paid attendance of 11,000 a night during the week.
@222--correct. FA is no longer an issue. The only contractual advantage they gain by waiting is that they would not have to deal with an owner-biased salary arbitrator in setting SS's salary for 2012--assuming of course that SS stays in the bigs from now till then. The team could send him back down later (let's say after he hits his much-ballyhooed innings limit) and pause the arb clock again.
How do the gate receipts and additional revenue that the Nats start getting when he comes up play into this? With 2 record low attendance nights, the Nats need something to draw fans and TV revenue. If SS pitches, they will come.
My guess is that Rizzo is looking at the stretch of crap teams we play after the first 40 games. Bring Strasburg up when we've moved into the easy part of the schedule -- he gets easy opponents in his first games and people come out to see the Pirates.
hypothetical ... let's say they do bring SS up now, with the caveat that they'll just send him down in Sept to stop the arb clock. But, let's say that miracle upon miracles happen and the Nats are knocking on the wild-card door come Sept.
Do you think the Nats would keep SS in the rotation (innings be-damned) to try and get into the playoffs, or would they stick to their plan and send hin down to rest (and stop the arb clock)?
Would you back the second option, knowing well that if he stayed in the rotation the Nats might be able to sneak into the playoffs?
Would you back the first option, knowing well that he might get outstretched and possibly harm his golden arm plus expedite his arbitration?
If indeed Steven is correct, that shutting SS down later this summer after he hits his innings limit will in fact have the same effect on out-years of team control, then this changes everything IMO.
Give him a couple AAA starts to make sure he doesn't get derailed by choosier hitters.
Other than that, may as well burn as many of his 160 innings (or whatever) in the Show.
If by some miracle the Nats are in the race when SS' innings limit is reached, he should still be shut down. c.f. Kerry Wood
The Rockies just brought Jimenez out for the 8th inning while he already had 113 pitches through 7 innings, the game after throwing a No Hitter in 128 pitches his previous start. I know he's not a rookie, but can we just call this the Kerry Wood treatment?
This suggestion that they could send Strasburg back down once he hits his innings limit late in the season as a means of delaying his arb clock is poppycock, for two big reasons. (a) Rizzo has said multiple times that once they bring Strasburg (and Storen) up, their intent is that they will be up to stay - not to be optioned down like the many lesser talents in the system. (b) And this is the operative one - on Sept 1 MLB rosters expand to 40, and minor league seasons are over. There's no place then to send any player down to. If they manage Strasburg's innings load correctly, they shouldn't need to shut him down until Sept 1 or so. He'll spend September on the major league roster but not pitching.
Factually, you are correct. Good points. My point is simply that if anyone's really that freaked out about service time, the clock can be paused again later (this year or next or the next).
Personally, I'm for calling him up and keeping him up. You don't waste the prime years of Michael Jordan's career to save a few dollars. We may go another generation without seeing a talent like this.
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