Stephen Strasburg Dominant in Second Rehab Start

Stephen Strasburg followed up his solid debut Sunday with a more effective and efficient outing for the Class A Potomac Nationals last night.  The right hander logged three scoreless innings Friday during his second minor league rehab appearance.

Washington had a limit on Strasburg, 50 pitches or 3 innings.  It took the flamethrower 31 pitches to get through his 1.2 innings of work Sunday, but only two more throws to make it a full 3 innings last night.  Three runners reached against Strasburg, all on weakly hit infield singles, and no balls reached the outfield.

26 of Strasburg’s 33 pitches were thrown for strikes.  He was able to notch 5 strikeouts, sitting down the leadoff man on K’s in each of his 3 innings of work.

"“I’m right on schedule and I haven’t had any setbacks so far, so I’m trying to keep it that way and get a little bit better every time out,” Strasburg said. “I tried to treat it more like a normal game, throwing pitches I wanted to throw in certain counts. It felt better. I was able to throw some for strikes and throw some out of the zone to make them chase.”"

Strasburg is confident that he’s going to be the pitcher he was before surgery and sees it as only a matter of time before all of the work he’s put into rehab results in his return to the Majors.  Washington may want to see 2 to 3 more starts in the Minors before they recall Strasburg, as his next appearance is expected to come Wednesday for the Nationals’ Single of Triple-A affiliates.

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