{"id":6832,"date":"2013-06-01T11:24:27","date_gmt":"2013-06-01T15:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6832"},"modified":"2013-06-11T08:01:30","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T12:01:30","slug":"are-we-going-to-have-to-go-through-this-every-time-he-stubs-his-toe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=6832","title":{"rendered":"Are we going to have to go through this every time he stubs his toe??"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Strained Oblique is not the same as torn UCL. Photo credit unknown.<\/p><\/div>\n

It didn’t take the holier-than-thou Jon Paul Morosi<\/strong> 10 minutes after Stephen Strasburg<\/strong>‘s early exit on 5\/31\/13 to post this “I told you so<\/a>” missive to remind everyone that he thinks the Nationals 2012 Shutdown decision was stupid (oh, and just to make sure everyone knows how smart he was, he also conveniently posted a link to his own opinion posted at the time).<\/p>\n

Of course, the fact that a “Strained Oblique” isn’t the same thing as an “Ulnar Collateral Ligament” didn’t stop him from his highly hypocritical post.\u00a0 Why hypocritical?\u00a0 Because teams shut down pitchers on innings limits ALL THE TIME.\u00a0 When the Cubs shut down Jeff Samardzija<\/strong> at the end of last season, did anyone bat an eye?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 Why was that?\u00a0 Was it because the Nats were in first place and the Cubs in last?\u00a0 Is that so?\u00a0 Well if you’re going to have a national debate about one guy and not a word about the other solely based on the team’s position in the standings, then something is wrong.\u00a0 Because both decisions were made to protect the player, not advance the team’s best short-term interest.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to re-hash the whole argument again.\u00a0 It isn’t worth it.\u00a0 Nobody’s going to listen, everyone has their opinion already formed and hardened again and again.\u00a0 The reason the Nats lost the NLCS wasn’t because our bullpen leaked run after run or because our closer coughed up a 2 run lead in the 9th; it was because Mike Rizzo<\/strong> arrogantly shut down Strasburg!\u00a0 Of course!\u00a0 Never mind that Strasburg’s replacement on the roster (Ross Detwiler<\/strong>) gave the team its best post season start.\u00a0 Never mind that the St. Louis Cardinals were a heck of a hitting team and never mind that our offense only really showed up in Game 5 (when, as it turned out, scoring SEVEN runes wasn’t enough to win).<\/p>\n

Ok, maybe I did just rehash the issue again.<\/p>\n

But to the point of this post; are we going to have to live with this stupid argument every time Strasburg stubs his toe or has any sort of routine strain or injury for the rest of his frigging career?\u00a0 Pitchers, as a rule of course, get injured.\u00a0 Throwing a baseball at max effort is hard on the body.\u00a0 Guys get injured all the time.\u00a0 Some guys are incredibly durable (think Justin Verlander<\/strong>) and other guys are just not (think about what this franchise went through with John Patterson<\/strong> and Shawn Hill<\/strong>).\u00a0 Just because Strasburg had a minor injury (and by all accounts it seems to be minor at this point) doesn’t mean Rizzo’s 2012 shutdown decision is to blame.<\/p>\n

Are we going to have this discussion every time?\u00a0 I hope not.<\/p>\n

6\/3\/13 update: found this Tweet<\/a> from Jon Heyman<\/strong> who acts as the voice of reason, not only shooting down Morosi’s article by pointing out that Oblique\/Lat is not the same as Arm, but shouting down Twitter followers who questioned the shutdown. \u00a0He had a very, very good point about last year’s shutdown; is it worth a 25-yr old’s career for “1 or 2 more starts?” \u00a0A sage question that few people seemed to be asking, even if it was going to probably be 4-5 more starts. \u00a0There needs to be more people coming back to the middle on this (as Will Carroll<\/strong> seemed to be doing), saying that we just don’t know if a shutdown helps or not, as opposed to people who vehimently and rudely state that the Nats and Rizzo were so stupid for shutting him down. \u00a0It just gets old.<\/p>\n

6\/10\/13: A little late to the game but Thom Loverro<\/strong> of the Washington Examiner calls out specifically Morosi and an Atlanta reporter for their “gutless” criticism of the Strasburg shutdown<\/a>. \u00a0He makes very good points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It didn’t take the holier-than-thou Jon Paul Morosi 10 minutes after Stephen Strasburg‘s early exit on 5\/31\/13 to post this “I told you so” missive to remind everyone that he thinks the Nationals 2012 Shutdown decision was stupid (oh, and just to make sure everyone knows how smart he was, he also conveniently posted a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[839,517,439,44,129,51,864,38,1822,758],"class_list":["post-6832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","tag-jeff-samardzija","tag-john-patterson","tag-jon-paul-morosi","tag-justin-verlander","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-shawn-hill","tag-stephen-strasburg","tag-thom-loverro","tag-will-carroll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6832"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6946,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions\/6946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}