Any way you slice it, the stats were not good for Washington Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg in his second start in the Arizona Fall League on Thursday. The top pick in the 2009 MLB draft, Strasburg allowed eight earned runs on three homers, including a grand slam, in 2 2/3 innings.
The quality of Strasburg's stuff was still there, as he hit 99 mph and flashed his plus-plus breaking ball and plus changeup. But his command was shaky from the outset, as he was working far too much in the middle of the strike zone for much of the outing.
Of the three homers, one was a fastball that the batter guessed right and cheated on, one was a good piece of hitting on a poorly located breaker, and the grand slam was just a hung pitch in every sense of the word.
Strasburg said all the right things after the game about trusting his stuff, saying he didn't do that in this game, and taking it as a learning experience about how to deal with professional hitters.
What was interesting about this outing was Strasburg's performance from the stretch. He obviously didn't have as much experience pitching with runners on as some other college pitchers, so that might be a small part of it, but there were some negatives I'll be watching in his next outings. He did lose some velocity from the stretch and appeared to have no rhythm in addition to poorer command. He pitched defensively and couldn't locate. His times to the plate were under 1.1 seconds, which is good, and means he was probably rushing a bit and could take a touch more time to deliver the ball and get some more drive to keep the velocity up without being too slow.
The one word I take out of this outing is context.
We need to remember that Strasburg was coming off a layoff in which he'd thrown a grand total of 8 1/3 innings since June 1, and he is still admittedly getting back into game shape. There's also no shame in getting lit up at the AFL. Entering Thursday's night contest, the league ERA here was exactly 6. The league batting average was .306 and the league slugging percentage was .491. You're going to give up some runs in the desert heat. "It's video-game stats," said one veteran AFLer.
Strasburg likely wasn't going to come down here and blow people away like Tommy Hanson did last AFL, simply because of the layoff. Hanson had been pitching the whole year in the minors and came to Arizona in a groove from day one. What's important right now is that Strasburg's raw stuff that made scouts drool in college is still there.
I am actually going to back off a bit from one of my earlier predictions -- about Strasburg's opening in the rotation next year -- not because of this performance, but because of some conversations I had.
It's now my understanding that even in a perfect scenario, in which Strasburg dominates the rest of the AFL and next year's spring training, the team's likely plan is for him to get at least a few starts in the minors and not ask too much of him too quickly, even if the performance during spring warranted it. They'll take the approach of letting him get his feet wet a little bit. I had seen a plausible scenario that given his big league stuff, and the lack of quality starting-pitching options for the Nationals, that he could be pitching in the big leagues in April.
That said, I am not backing off my assertion he can be a top-50 pitcher as soon as next year. Tommy Hanson was a top-30 starter this year, according to ESPN's Player Rater, despite the fact that he didn't pitch in the big leagues the first two months, and Strasburg doesn't have to put up Hanson's rookie numbers to make the top 50, especially if he brings the strikeouts as expected.