Strasburg Drops His First Game in Loss to the Dodgers
Stephen Strasburg was not at his best in the early going against the Los Angeles Dodgers and ultimately could not handle the red-hot Justin Turner(.344 with 12 homers in his past 32 games). Turner turned two Stras offerings into round-trippers and was responsible for 5 of the 6 Dodgers runs. On the surface, 6 earned runs never really looks too good but it should be a testament to Strasburg’s competitiveness that he managed to re-group after his early struggles and retire 12 of the final 13 batters that he faced.
We’ve all seen the animation by now that only 5 pitchers have started the season 13-0 in the Cy Young era and the most recent three (Guidry ’78, Clemens ’86, and Scherzer ’13) all won the Cy Young award so, how does Strasburg stack up? Strasburg ranks 12th among current NL starters in ERA and he’s got the 4th most strikeouts. While really good, he’s not quite on that Cy Young level as of now. I still believe that a Cy is in the works for Strasburg and the Nationals and as a 28 year old with fewer innings on his arm than many (due to his past injuries), the best may be yet to come.
Offensively, the Nats weren’t electric but we did see yet another glimpse into how dynamic Trea Turner can make this offense. Turner went a mediocre 1-5 at the dish yet he was still one of the major offensive cogs. In the 1st, he had no business getting on base after beating out a routine grounder. Then a Michael A Taylor single and a risky but well-executed double steal set the table for Turner scoring on a Harper sac fly. If you have literally anyone else in Turner’s spot in that first inning, they don’t beat out that grounder and Taylor’s single is relatively meaningless – he probably doesn’t steal 2nd and Harper’s sac fly turns into just another fly out. Just another example of how his dynamite speed can change the game
With just over a week until the trade deadline, the Nationals really have a pretty complete team but Ryan Zimmerman (who started his rehab assignment on Thursday) simply can NOT handle the starting first base job anymore and you can never have too much bullpen help. I’ll tackle potential Nats targets and who I want them to gun for more in depth in the coming week.