Stephen Strasburg intends to throw more than 160-inning pitch limit for Washington Nationals-MLB
Stephen Strasburg speaks on the issue of 160-inning pitch limit imposed on him by the Washington Nationals for this year. He states that right now he aims to continue his amazing run of form and throw as many innings as he can.
While he admits that ultimate decision will be made by the management, he clarifies that he is not feeling anything wrong with his arms.
As the season started, the Nationals had declared that they would be using Strasburg sparingly. They feared that since he had surgery last year, he may end up getting injured and eventually languishing on a lengthy outage from the season.
However, as the first half of the season completes, Strasburg has turned out to be the best pitcher for Washington in terms of numbers. This gives one reason to speculate that the Nationals may want to continue with him throughout the season in order to
keep the momentum going.
In this regard, there has no official statement come from the management. However, Strasburg is conscious of what may happen with him down the line.
He thinks, if they really stick to their plan and take him out from the season after 160 innings, he will not be worried. Instead, he states that he will take this as a sign from the club that they actually discuss him and look for his best interest.
Furthermore, Strasburg believes that they are in a better position to make a judgment about him and about how far he can be allowed to sustain.
"If they (the Nationals) actually do that, I'll actually have more respect for them, because that's going to take some serious guts," he said.
Strasburg still has a number of innings to throw if he goes by the plan.
Meanwhile, one of the options that Washington can go for is shortening his number of innings per game and letting him play through the season. In this way, they can have their ace appearing in most of the games, however for little time period.
To what extent the Nationals are going to give importance to this option will be interesting to observe.
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