Washington Nationals: This is what we’ve been waiting for from Strasburg

In a World Series stacked with elite pitching talent, there’s one Washington Nationals ace that’s been slipping under-the-radar all this time.

Washington Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg just finished up a fantastic Game Six outing in Houston where he went 8.1 innings with 7 strikeouts and held the Astros to no runs after the first inning. Last night was one of many recent postseason outings by Stras that has cemented his legacy as a clutch postseason-type pitcher, and it’s also (at least from where I’m sitting) has made the long wait for him to arrive on the scene worth it.

Looking back at his 2019 postseason stat line, Stras has pitched to the tune of a 5-0 record and 1.99 ERA with 47 punch-outs. He’s been the Nationals‘ most sure-handed pitcher this postseason and that’s really saying something considering he’s teammates with a future Hall-of-Famer in one Max Scherzer.

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Overall in his playoff career, Stras is pitching to a 6-2 record and 1.46 ERA with 71 strikeouts in 55.1 innings pitched. So, it would be safe to say that Strasburg is a legitimate postseason starting pitcher so far in his career. No, he’s not quite Madison Bumgarner, but in comparison to Scherzer (granted Mad Max has 21 postseason appearances to Stras’ 9), it seems pretty evident the former number one overall draft pick has broken onto the scene as one of the game’s most reliable playoff starting pitchers.

This is the Stephen Strasburg we’ve been waiting on all this time. Dating back to when he made his Major League debut back in 2010, he made 17 starts across two seasons and required Tommy John surgery at the tail end of his rookie season in 2010. He then came back healthy in 2012 to pitch to a 15-6 record with a 3.16 ERA and making his first All-Star team.

The Washington Nationals also made the playoffs that year, but Stras was famously shut down before the postseason and thus he sat and watched the Nats go out rather early that year. Why I make this point is because after all the injuries, after all the shutdowns and careful handling of Stras’ health and innings limits, he’s finally appearing to pay off and become the star pitcher he was drafted to be.

Stras has quietly gone under the radar, not just in this postseason, but this entire regular season as he’s had arguably his best year (though he didn’t make the All-Star team).

*18 wins (the most of his career) and a 3.32 ERA (his lowest since 2014) with the second-most inning ever thrown (209) on the season for the power right-hander.

He’s stayed healthy (hence the large inning workload) and has made adjustments to his game that has allowed him to tax his armless and see a sharp uptick in ground ball percentage.

This season, Stras saw his ground ball rate jump to 51.1%, which is the highest its been in the Majors since 2013 all due to the development of the sinker which he threw 18.5% of the time. The higher usage of the sinker, mixed with a higher usage of curveballs (30%) and a decrease in four-seams (29.8%) and the lowest four-seam average velocity of his career (94.3 mph), has facilitated Stras’ evolution from a hard-throwing prospect with potential to a full-fledged Major League pitcher with grit and grind and postseason capability.

I’m excited to see how much Strasburg continues to progress. We’ve heard about Gerrit Cole and the year he’s having. We’ve heard about the greats like Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer in this World Series, but Stras has gone severely under-the-radar for the season he’s had and should be considered for World Series MVP if the Washington Nationals were to win it all tonight.