Nats ace, 28, back from elbow injury with new outlook
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Stephen Strasburg’s first spring training bullpen session lasted 10 minutes Thursday. He let loose — throwing all his pitches — and didn’t experience any pain in his right elbow. It was an encouraging first day, but that’s not the goal.
“I’ve always been here Day 1,” Strasburg said. “Question is, I guess, Day 162, or whatever it is with those off days.”
Strasburg was around for the beginning, but not the end, of 2016. He crumbled after a 14-0 start, succumbing to injuries — first an upper back strain, then some elbow soreness, then, the knockout blow, a season-ending pronator tendon tear on Sept. 7.
The good news was he didn’t require a dreaded second Tommy John surgery, or any surgery at all. The bad news was he missed the remainder of the season anyway and watched Washington lose in the National League Division Series without his help for the second time in his career even after receiving a plate- let-rich plasma injection to hasten his healing.
Four months later, the 28-year-old Strasburg, who is entering the first year of the $175 million extension he signed last May, insisted there are no lingering effects from the elbow injury.
In a weird twist, Strasburg is the healthy one of the Nationals’ aces as Max Scherzer, perhaps baseball’s most durable pitcher, recovers from a stress fracture in his ring finger that could keep him out for the start of the season.
So Strasburg’s health, always crucial to Washington’s success, becomes that much more important. As part of his effort to remain healthy and available, he plans to cut back on using his slider — a pitch he incorporated for the first time last season and theorizes generated stress on his elbow — and take a more mature approach to body maintenance.
“I’m just going to make sure I get my time in the training room,” Strasburg said. “It is kind of tough, because there’s a lot of guys and everybody needs to get their work in. I think in the past, when I was younger, I tried to stay out of the training room as much as possible, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that it’s no different than spending time in the weight room. You need to get your work in the training room, as well, to make sure everything is staying where it needs to be.”
One change, besides his facial hair, is already evident: Strasburg is thinner than a year ago. That’s because he took a page from the offseason program he followed before the 2014 season, which remains the only year he didn’t miss a start, and incorporated distance running early on. The schedule included three to four miles Wednesdays and six to seven on Sundays — sometimes on the beach, sometimes on a road parallel to it — before tapering to daily sprints.
“It’s kind of corny, but they say the season’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” Strasburg said. “And so if I’m just training to sprint, I’m not close to being able to run a marathon.”
Manager Dusty Baker said he doesn’t know if the team will handle Strasburg differently this spring. That, he said, is better question for pitching coach Mike Maddux. But Thursday was a good start.
“He looked like Stras to me,” Baker said.