Sunday, June 27, 2010

Strasburg & The Big Train

Stephen Strasburg already shares many similarities with Walter "Big Train" Johnson. Before the season began, I documented many of these in Washingtonian magazine. They are similar in build, both right-handers. They pretty much came out of nowhere to national prominence and they're both epic fireballers.
Last week they began to share another similarity as Strasburg lost 1-0 to Kansas City. Nobody lost more 1-0 games in big league history than the Big Train (26).
But there's another area the new kid in town doesn't want to share with Johnson. During his Hall of Fame career, Johnson was so concerned about hitting a batter that he rarely buzzed batters inside. In fact, Ty Cobb figured that out. Now comes word that Nationals' officials are a mite concerned that Strasburg is around the plate too much, too. Will he come inside more? Give hitters an up-close glimpse of that high heat? We'll see what happens in future starts.

No comments:

Post a Comment