Stephen Strasburg approached Dusty Baker on Saturday with a revelation of honesty that he was a little stiff and sore. Baker and Mike Rizzo took that information, and did the right thing and shutdown Strasburg for a while as the bigger picture (post-season) is more important than the short-term.
ESPN photo reprint
Writers like Jon Morosi will try to turn this into a soundbite of weakness which is why the machismo of so many players will conceal injuries so they don’t get labeled like this:
Stephen Strasburg has been placed on DL 8 times in his @MLB career, including 4 occasions over past 2 years, per the @washingtonpost.
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) August 22, 2016
Strasburg did the right thing. Sammy Solis did the right thing. Joe Ross did the right thing. Position players don’t always speak up like Bryce Harper finally did about his neck which was probably well overdue.
A star player on another team came forward and went public with his fatigue. Talk about putting it out there:
“I know I’m tired. I can feel I’m tired. I don’t have no legs. I’m throwing the ball over there with no legs. I’m hitting with nothing right now. Most of my hits have been infield hits and bloopers, stuff like that. It’s not solid contact lately.”
The Dog Days of Summer is a grind, and the schedule makers have been downright cruel to the Washington Nationals with 20 games in 20 days in the hottest and most humid weather days on the calendar, and the trip to Colorado in the beginning of it.
NIH said this about high altitude and blood/oxygen levels: “As oxygen is 21% of dry air, the inspired oxygen pressure is 0.21×(100−6.3)=19.6 kPa at sea level. Atmospheric pressure and inspired oxygen pressure fall roughly linearly with altitude to be 50% of the sea level value at 5500 m and only 30% of the sea level value at 8900 m (the height of the summit of Everest).”
The fresh players like Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman are exceeding their teammates who are nicked up and exhausted because they are rested and ready. The strong will survive, and you hope more players do what Harper and Strasburg did and if you aren’t healthy, tell the boss.
We checked in with a source on how Ramos is doing, and were told “He is doing well, just a slump…” Even Trea Turner is in a little rut, and Jayson Werth’s drop in production you could see after the Colorado series. We had hoped he was going to get a day off on Thursday as the return from high elevations will change your body. Werth’s on-base streak abruptly ended shortly afterwards.
Since August 7th, Wilson Ramos has seen his batting average go from .338 to .319. August 7th is the day Ramos beat the Giants with the only score of the game on a HR. A typical rightfield oppo boppo shot for Ramos, and since then he has just the one HR in Coors. Even last night he made a bid for the short porch in Camden Yard’s rightfield, and it fell short. That has seemed to be happening a lot lately with Ramos. 20 to 30 feet of distance to a big leaguer is the difference between a home run and a can of corn to an outfielder. Balls he had been getting under he is now topping for weak grounders. His hits lately are more of the ‘seeing eye’ variety.
Flashback to this:
Also the third game in 24 hours started by Wilson Ramos.
— James Wagner (@ByJamesWagner) May 15, 2016
It is far better to help your team by tapping out like Bryce Harper did by getting right then to tough it out and hurt your team when you cannot be productive.
Just some 2⊄ on the subject.
