For the reasons Jazayerli argues in detail, the decision to shut down Strasburg seems obviously stupid to me. It’s certainly good that we’re no longer in the era when Dusty Baker can be just completely indifferent about the future of his young star pitchers to achieve short-term goals. But that’s just it — as Jazayerli correctly puts it, the Nats “are making Strasburg pay for sins inflicted on pitchers from a different generation.” Keeping his pitch counts down is sensible, but as far as I can tell there’s no empirical evidence whatsoever that keeping a young pitcher below some completely arbitrary low innings limit will substantially reduce his risk of injury going forward. If the Nats were 30 games out of it I’d have no problem with excessive caution, even if I wouldn’t make the same decision. But when you’re headed to the post season since, gulp, 1981 (and can I say fuck you very much Bug Selig again?) — I don’t see it. The fact that flags fly forever isn’t a good reason to let a young pitcher throw 140 pitches in a game. But it strikes me as a pretty good reason to let a properly protected young pitcher stay in the rotation. Going without your best roster in the playoffs for the purposes of not-very-convincing speculation that overcorrects for past practices? Davey Johnson has done his usual great job in Washington and deserves some measure of deference, but I really don’t get it.
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