SATURDAY, AUGUST28, 2010
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JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann is one of many pitchers to have undergone Tommy John surgery.
TOM GANNAM/ASSOCIATED PRESS Cardinals pitcher Jaime Garcia came back from the surgery and might be rookie of the year this season. Strasburg to make most of arm he’s been dealt
Phenom is optimistic he can be in top form after surgery
BY ADAM KILGORE On Saturday, as he flies to Los
Angeles, where he will undergo ligament-replacement surgery that will place his nascent, breathtaking career on pause, Stephen Strasburg will pull out a piece of paper and write down everything he is thinking. “So I don’t forget,” Strasburg
said. “Your mind might get a little jumbled through this experience. I don’t know what to expect. I’ve just got to remember everything I want to focus on so next time I go out there and pitch, I can just keep going like I was this year.” By Friday evening, Strasburg
had digested and accepted the reality that shook the Washing- ton Nationals. He will undergo the procedure commonly known as Tommy John surgery to repair the torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and miss at least one full year, probably the entire 2011 season. He pledged to work “as hard as I possibly can” to
return with the same brilliance he exhibited this season. Chances are, he will. For assur-
ance, he could look only a few lockers to his right in the Nation- als clubhouse, to Jordan Zimmer- mann’s stall. Zimmermann un- derwent Tommy John surgery last August and, after a grueling year of rehab, climbed themound at Nationals Park on Thursday night and pitched four innings against the St. Louis Cardinals. “I felt the same when it was
done,” Zimmermann said. “My delivery was the same. Every- thing feels normal.” Strasburg said he found solace
in “all the guys in the big leagues who are Cy Young contenders, Hall of Famers who have had this surgery.” Roughly 85 percent of pitchers who receive the surgery return to full strength, and many — 10 this season — become all- stars. The stunted careers of Ben Sheets, Kerry Wood and Erik Bedard speak for the other 15 percent. Chris Carpenter, the starter
who nearly won the Cy Young last year, opposed Zimmermann at Nationals Park on Thursday night. Jaime Garcia, the Cardi- nals starter who might be rookie of the year this season, pitched
Friday night. Both have had Tom- my John surgery. Another survivor can offer
first-hand advice. Strasburg stopped by the Nationals’ club- house Friday afternoon, and Zim- mermann spoke with him. “I told him it was going be
fine,” Zimmermann said. “The first two months are going to be a little rough. Once you get through that, it should be a lot easier. You actually throw a ball and go out and hang out with the guys on the field instead of being cooped up inside all day.” The Nationals assumed this
season would prepare them for a season in which two-fifths of their rotation was made of home- grown, hard-throwing aces. Eeri- ly, the same day one marked his full recovery from Tommy John, the other learned he would need it. The Nationals could only think, “What if?” “When you would see Zimmer-
mann and then Strasburg togeth- er in spring training, you couldn’t help but think, ‘They’re going to be in there together at some point,’ ” Manager Jim Riggleman said. “It’s still going to happen. It’s just going to be another year before it happens.” While the odds favor a full
recovery for Strasburg, the sur- gery strikes theNationals a brutal blow. Of course, they will not benefit from his dominant pitch- ing for a full season. Strasburg will also accrue service time while on the 60-day disabled list, meaning he will creep one year closer to free agency without throwing a single pitch for the Nationals. Every decision the Nationals
made since they drafted Stras- burg in June of last year came with the notion of him topping their rotation, uninterrupted, for years to come. Every decision the Nationals make starting now and through the offseason will be tinged with the knowledge that Strasburg will probably not throw a major league pitch until April 2012. Nationals General Manager
Mike Rizzo remained resolute in the face of Strasburg’s impending surgery. He said he would not let the injury to Strasburg affect his plan to build a winning team in 2011, including the potential signing of first baseman Adam Dunn. He also remained confident
theNationals will be able to build their rotation next year and then around Strasburg and Zimmer-
THOMAS BOSWELL With proper rehab, odds are the 2012 Strasburg will be as good as new boswell from D1
and stronger than the original ligament. Also, because Strasburg was
injured at a young age (22), he’ll have 18months to grow into his lanky body and strengthen his pitching core. His shoulder, which sent himto the disabled list with inflammation, will almost have completed its mature growth. Shoulders kill careers, seldomelbows. Strasburg will actuallymiss one of themost precarious times in his shoulder’s development. Such rosy thinking—and
we’re hearing plenty of it from the Nats—is just a possibility, far froma probability. Themost likely outcome, perhaps 75 percent, is the Strasburg we’ve watched in 2010 will be almost indistinguishable fromthe Strasburg we enjoy in 2012. But there won’t be a Strasburg
of 2011. That’s 100 percent bad. The growth in interest that has encircled the Nats this summer will be put on hold. Even if the Nats re-sign AdamDunn and Livan Hernandez, which now seems virtually essential to holding their fan base, they’ll still only appeal to baseball lovers when they say, “Come watch the development of YuneskyMaya,Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa.” Bryce Harper’s not coming next year. Until Strasburg returns intact,
a cloud will cover part of the sun on South Capitol Street. There’s an 8-to-15 percent chance that Strasburg will never be the same again.Maybe he’d still find a way back as amundane big- league pitcher. But nomore Strasmas for us. Or him. Some pitchers push too hard
to come back quickly and re- injure themselves. After all, a tendon, which ismeant to connect bone tomuscle, is attempting to replace a ligament, which connect bone to bone. Some pitchers don’t condition their arms hard enough and the “new elbow” isn’t strong enough to take the load of professional pitching.
And nobody can tell you exactly how hard is exactly hard enough. It’s art, intuition and science. Beyond acknowledging this
worst-case outcome, let’s not dwell on it. Such a day will be bad enough if it ever comes. “In a way, it’s good that it
happened now, instead of when we’re going to the postseason or getting ready for aWorld Series,” Strasburg said in what I’ll cherish as the epitome of the rookie quote. Everybody’s got a theory on
what went wrong. Strasburg deserves the first shot: “What
happened the other night is something that I felt before [in college]. Nothing was torn then. Personally, I don’t know what the doctors think, but I think it might have beenmore something that happened over time.” Addme to that camp. I don’t
think the Nats brought him along too fast or slow. I don’t think his pitch limit or innings load was amistake. It’s all an educated guess. I don’t even think Strasburg’s improved “circle change-up” this season, which acts akin to a screwball, created the problem, though the
pitch can cause pronation of the elbow that strains the ligament that got torn. It all depends how you throw the circle change. For decades, it was also called “the window-shade change” because you pulled straight down, like closing a shade, causing little elbow strain. With hindsight, the easy
second-guess is that the Nats should have shut Strasburg down for the season after he went on the disabled list with shoulder stiffness lastmonth. Not because his shoulder hurt, but because favoring discomfort in one part of the arm
rise to uniquemoments. Strasburg’s 14-strikeout, no-walk debut proved beyond doubt he was in that category. Howmany other times, with national TV cameras on, did he try to approach those heights in Viera, Harrisburg and Syracuse? In the majors, the torque just twisted tighter. In Florida in February, Nats
GeneralManagerMike Rizzo watched the Strasburg circus and said: “All innings aren’t the same. They don’t put the same stress on a person or on an arm. For a young pitcher, some innings aremore like an inning- and-a-half. I count themthat way.” Howmuch did every
Strasburg inning this season take out of him? Or, for that matter, what about the toll of every inning he pitched since he became a national sports celebrity at San Diego State? Assuming he comes back a
healthy Strasburg in ’12,maybe 18months of celebrity detoxification won’t be so bad for amodest, determined young man. Strasburg will never be “just
JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST The optimistic viewis that missing next season will allow Stephen Strasburg’s body to develop without undue stress on his pitching shoulder.
sometimes causes injury elsewhere. File under: It seemed like a good idea at the time. My contribution to the causal
guessing game comes from direct observation. I’ve never seen a young pitcher put under a fraction of the big-game pressure Strasburg faced. It’s nobody’s fault. But I think it helped snap an elbow. Strasburg started three games
in spring training, 11 in the minors and a dozen for the last- place Nats. And all 26 of them felt, for Strasburg, like a postseason playoff game. Extraordinary athletes can
another pitcher.” But when he returns, with his fallibility firmly established,maybe he will blend into the fabric of the gamemore, not stand above it— heralded as the future face of the Nats and, perhaps, of the whole sport, too. For someone so special, with a
gift so rare, we can wait. Like we have a choice.
boswellt@washpost.com
mann. “With Stephen and Zim, we’ve
said all along that we need to come up with a real rotation,” Rizzo said. “We’re certainly going to attack and get our rotation in place via free agency, trades or developing our own. That’s al- ways our primary goal. It’s been our primary goal, and we’re cer- tainly not going to stop looking for the ultimate starting rotation. That’s the core of the ballclub. “A year goes fast. A year from
now, this guy next to me will be toeing the rubber and we’ll have two-fifths of our rotation, of what we had planned, on the field at the same time. We’re going to be ready to take off from there.” Strasburg had already began
the same process. He has never had surgery on his arm before, and he had to cope with not only his own fragility but the wide- ranging consequences of it. “He probably feels like he let down everyone in the world,” center field NyjerMorgan said. When Strasburg received the
news Thursday night, it stunned him—he felt good enough to play catch at that moment.Eventually, he embraced his new challenge. Initially, confusion and anger en- veloped him.
“It didn’t take a matter of minutes,” Strasburg said. “It took, definitely, a few hours. I’ve got great support all around me. They reminded me of everything I should be thankful for. They put everything in perspective for me. The big thing, the bottom line, this is a game. I’mvery blessed to play this game for a living.” Strasburg hopes he might step
back on a major league mound at the tail end of the 2011 season, more likely the start of 2012. On Friday, he still hadn’t separated himself from the final moment of his rookie year. He remembers he was rolling
in Philadelphia on Aug. 21, the night he threw his last pitch. The Nationals were pounding the Phillies, the reigning National League champs, and Strasburg was at the height of powers, leading the way. “That was when I had that
feeling,” Strasburg said. “That was a packed house with some rowdy fans, and I didn’t even feel like they were there. I was just so locked in, and everything was working. “Sure enough, something hap-
pened. But that’s something to build on.”
kilgorea@washpost.com
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