holy crap...horrible news for the Nats. and for baseball fans, generally. i blame "daddy ball" little league. select leagues that have kids playing 100 games/year.
I figured that he would get hurt, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pitchers usually comeback fine from Tommy John. Better have it happen now then happen when you are contending. Look at Josh Johnson.
This type of situation is what sets the *Lebrons of the world apart. Very rarely does a super-prospect live up to the hype. They always get injured or their a bust. I guess we'll have to wait and see... *I'm not a Lebron fan at all...
Well that sucks. As I was watching his first start I remember thinking 'this kid is going to have a great career barring injury.' I sure hope he can recover, he could be a great one.
Yep. Still, it hurts to lose your #1 pitcher and #1 prospect for a year, especially with all the signing money they tossed at him.
Not the ones that have questionable mechanics...like previously said look at what happened to studs Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and add Francisco Liriano to that list. All three of them threw high 90's and had tight, outstanding breaking balls but were never able to fully regain back to their pre-surgery forms. Liriano is making progress but the velocity isn't the same and the slider isn't as nasty. He can come back 100%, the Dr. on ESPN said 75% of the pitchers come back fully but I think this should be a serious concern to his career along with the correlation between his mechanics and durability. They already shut him down once for a shoulder injury then he gets pulled from Saturday's game for an elbow issue which ends up being this
http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects...essionalPitcherAnalyses/StephenStrasburg.html Strasburg has some serious issues with his mechanics. I hope he can make an adjustment and come back. It would be awful for him to work his way back, and then blow a shoulder because his mechanics are still poor.
That's messed up if true. The challenge he faces is that what makes him unique is not just his power. He has wicked-crazy stuff, and I wonder how much of that would survive if he changed to more traditional mechanics. I imagine a lot of the crazy movement he has on his pitches is at least in part to his unique mechanics, though I don't have any real basis for thinking that. On the flipside, in June, the guy also said this: The bottom line on Stephen Strasburg is that I don't think he'll be another Mark Prior. While I'm working to get some video to confirm this -- because still photos can only tell you so much -- Stephen Strasburg's mechanics and timing don't seem to be as bad as those of Mark Prior. However, Strasburg also isn't completely clean. I see things that concern me in his arm action and timing and the pitcher they again bring to mind is John Smoltz, another pitcher who had a borderline Inverted W and some arm problems as a result. I could very easily see Stephen Strasburg having a comparable career; years of total dominance accompanied by lost years due to shoulder and elbow problems. If he ends up John Smoltz, that's not bad.
Francisco Liriano has never been the same. This season he's finally got some of his stuff back, and he's 4 years removed from TJS.
