Stephen-Strasburg

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Josh Johnson warming up in Nationals Park on 4 August 2009”][/caption] It’s gonna be a short one this week. Spring Training continues down in Florida and Arizona as teams are making cuts to their rosters, sending players down to the minor leagues or releasing them as they see fit. Most team rosters are starting to take shape and both Stephen Strasburg and Aroldis Chapman have pitched (quite beautifully) a couple of games each. ...

Stephen Strasburg finally made his Major League debut in spring training yesterday and he was everything that the Nationals could have hoped he would be in two innings. After receiving 15 M$ before ever throwing a pitch, you’d certainly hope he was amazing, but will he make the starting rotation? His first two innings had two strikeouts, two hits, and no earned runs, making him somewhat of an oddity on a Nationals pitching staff that averages an over 10.00 ERA so far in spring training. Strasburg’s fastball was in the 96-98 MPH range over the 27 pitches he threw, with a few changeups around 91 and a wicked 81 MPH breaking ball. The man seems like he can pitch so far, but we’ll have to see how he does over the rest of spring training. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. It’s all old news by now, but the World Series champions for this year were the New York Yankees. Powered by a ridiculous performance by Hideki Matsui, the Yanks pulled far ahead early in the game as Matsui clobbered anything Pedro Martinez threw at him. It wasn’t a massacre, but it wasn’t pretty either. World Series Time-Lapse by Robert Caplin from Robert Caplin on Vimeo. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Remember last week when I said the Marlins needed to start doing better for the rest of the season? Seems they took my urgings seriously. Counting Wednesday, the Marlins are 4-2 ( good), with two of those wins coming from teams above them on the wild card ( great). They’ve also got a streak of 13 straight games with ten or more hits ( wow). At this time of writing, the Marlins are two back on the wild card and 4.5 back on the division. If they keep this amazing run up, they just might make it to the playoffs this year. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. I wonder if I should change that to reflect that by sports I mostly mean baseball and college football… Speaking of baseball, it’s time for the MLB Draft! Ah, the MLB Draft. It’s got everything the other drafts do…except people who are interested in it. It’s a problem addressed briefly in the wiki page, but it mainly stems from the fact that drafted baseball players tend to not see action for sometimes two to three years. In extreme cases, they never make the Bigs at all. Here’s Rob Neyer with some more on that vein. ...