ANALYSIS/OPINION:
If you need any more evidence, despite the pitchfork bearers, about the belief in Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo’s Tommy John recovery plan, look no further than Nationals Park this week.
On Tuesday, the Nationals announced the signing of Stephen Strasburg to a seven-year contract extension reportedly worth $175 million.
On Wednesday, former Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann takes the mound for his new team, the Detroit Tigers, who gave him a five-year, $110 million contract this winter.
That’s nearly $300 million invested in Rizzo’s courageous recovery plan for his pitchers coming back from elbow ligament surgery.
You might know it as the Strasburg shutdown.
Rizzo became the most vilified man in baseball in 2012 when he stood by his convictions and didn’t sell out Strasburg, refusing to change the recovery plan — an inning limit for the season, no matter how the it unfolded — after Strasburg had Tommy John surgery in 2010.
As it was, it unfolded with Washington winning the National League East and facing postseason play without Strasburg. It didn’t matter that in Strasburg’s last five starts, he gave up 13 runs in 26 innings. Or that Strasburg had pitched a total of 147 professional innings to that point — 55 in the minors and 92 in the majors. He had pitched more innings in 2012 — nearly 160 innings — than he had in his professional career.
No one particularly cared that while it was known as the Strasburg shutdown, it was actually first implemented the year before with Zimmermann, following his elbow ligament surgery in 2009.
None of it mattered. Rizzo was crucified.
You would have thought he was shutting down Metro.
Rizzo was validated on Tuesday at Nationals Park — a pardon of sorts, issued by Strasburg, for the crime of protecting a player.
“This is really a special day, for me and the organization,” Rizzo said. “I promised the family a long time ago to do what was best for the player, and I’m glad to see that he did his part by staying true to us.”
Strasburg decided to buck the Scott Boras client trend and not go to free agency, which was waiting for Strasburg at the end of this season. There would have been money, and probably more of it, for the quiet 27-year-old.
But Strasburg, who saw the abuse that his general manager took for protecting him, also saw an organization that created a level of comfort for a player, who, when he first arrived in Washington as the first pick in the 2009 draft, looked as uncomfortable as Robert Griffin III at a Jay Gruden birthday party.
“We are very comfortable here,” Strasburg said, referring to his family.
“There were a lot of situations in the past, looking back on it, they took great care of me, not just as a pitcher, but as a person,” he said.
There you go. The payoff.
It was always a no-win situation for Rizzo, in the sense that you can’t prove that a measure of prevention is responsible for what has happened since then. In other words, you can’t say for sure that the 168 games Zimmermann has started and the 1,043 innings he has pitched since his Tommy John surgery are a result of his shutdown. Nor can you credit the 127 games Strasburg has started or the 758 innings he has pitched since are a result of his shutdown either.
But now you can say that a top major-league pitcher, under the wing of Boras, decided to stay at home rather than cash in on the free agent market.
That’s an undeniable payoff.
You can argue whether or not Strasburg, with his 59-37 career record and 3.07 ERA in 139 starts, is worth it. At times, he has pitched like the best pitcher in baseball. Other times, he has shown a frightening fragility. Was your option really to let him walk? I don’t think so.
What does this mean for the other bookend, Bryce Harper, the Nationals’ top pick the following year, the reigning NL Most Valuable Player and baseball’s Minister of Fun? This is a kid who probably dreamed of being baseball’s top prize since he was 10 years old. Unlike Strasburg, Rizzo didn’t pull a thorn out of Harper’s paw — at least not yet.
But the Lerner family can at least show on their resume that it is willing to pay big money for a homegrown star. That ball now is squarely in Harper’s court.
There’s one more contract, though — Rizzo’s. The Nationals’ general manager is in the final year of his contract, with a June 15 deadline for the Lerners to pick up a two-year option that would keep him around through 2018.
Nothing has surfaced yet, but it is difficult to believe that Strasburg would make this commitment moving forward unless he knew the man who protected him was not in danger. He doesn’t want to see Rizzo pack up the photo that hangs in his office of Strasburg, signed by the pitcher, who wrote, “Riz, thanks for looking out for me.”
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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