While “china doll” Stephen Strasburg will be a richer man, the 7-year $175 million deal he and the Nationals agreed to will most certainly hurt the team in the long run. In the contract extension, he is set to make $25 million a season. However, since his debut in 2010, he has had quite a few stints on the disabled list including Tommy John surgery, and that concerns me the most. Yes, he is off to a solid start in 2016, but his history of not staying healthy gives me concern that 2016 would mirror what has happened in his early career.
As with pitchers in the past, there have been too many instances where teams rush high-talent prospects to the big leagues way too soon and over use them when they are not quite ready. From 2012-2015, his innings pitched accelerated considerably after a shortened second season. The better thing the team could have done was to possibly start him in the bullpen and not pitch as many innings, thus that could have been a smoother transition to the rotation. Then evaluate whether he is ready to pitch close to 200 innings in the future.
Going into the season, he said that he was not sure how to handle this considering it was a contract year. “I really don’t know,” Strasburg said in spring training. “It’s not like I’ve been in a contract year before. I know what I know, and I know that I go out there, and I bust my butt every single day. If I give it everything have to help this team win some games, all that other stuff is going to take care of itself. I guess the best I can do is just focus on the now and what I got going on today, and then when I go to bed, what do I have going on the next day. I’m going to stay in there and try to function in the same time zone.”
While his innings accelerated from 2012-2015, he has only made 30 starts twice and has thrown 200 or more innings just one time. This stat leads to a thought by Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports: “The Nationals are betting as much on future performance as past—a tricky wager seeing as they’re the franchise that has publicly said they fear the health of Tommy John pitchers after their seventh year post-op. Strasburg’s seventh year is next season.”
Even with some believing that his history is in the past, according to a model developed by Bradley Woodrum, Tim Dierkes and the rest of the MLB Trade Rumors staff, Strasburg began the year with well above average risk for another Tommy John operation. Another problematic factor could be his fast ball velocity. His average fastball velocity is very good, near 95 MPH, but down from his peak of over 97 MPH in his first partial year in the majors.
One of the sub-debates under the main debate involving pitcher injuries is the overuse of a slider. While many pitchers past and present have a slider in their arsenal, throwing a slider is extremely painful on the elbow and arm and is not natural. I feel that many pitchers with sliders in their arsenal are not taught the right way to throw that kind of pitch.
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Despite getting off to a solid start in 2016, I do not believe that Strasburg has proven himself enough to warrant such a lucrative deal. I’m not sure if Strasburg will ever be able to remain healthy while being dependent on to throw well over 100 innings. If he can surpass 200 innings in 2016 without any major setbacks, then I may concede that this deal is worth every dollar. Until that becomes a possibility, I don’t see this working out well for the Nationals in part because of what has happened with big name-big contracts of the past such as Albert Pujols. This is not just with Strasburg, but the expectations attached with a $100+million deal can and often overwhelm athletes to do more than they are capable of doing.
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