Robert Griffin III
courtesy of Keith Allison

Last season if the Redskins defense allowed 32 points they would have lost. Looking back at seasons before that and if the Redskins defense didn’t shutdown the opponents offense they lost. The most points scored by the Redskins in 2011 were the 28 they scored against the Giants in their first game of the season. This is a different year and a different team. Robert Griffin III showed exactly why he is trusted above the veteran presence of Rex Grossman and why his talent isn’t the most impressive thing about him.

Early on in the first quarter there was a muffed exchange between Robert Griffin and Alfred Morris. RGIII didn’t panic or try and do too much. He simply picked up the ball, looked down field, and when he found no one he protected himself as much as possible and took the tackle. It goes down as a fumble and a rush for no gain in the score book, but keeping possession of the football is something that the Redskins struggled with last season. Robert Griffin was able to hold onto the ball and while the Redskins gained nothing on the play they lost nothing either. In total the Redskins turned the ball over zero times and forced the Saints to turn it over three times.

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Last night’s 3-inning outing isn’t the one Nats fans, or Strasburg himself, will want to remember as his last start of the 2012 season, but as of this morning, Davey Johnson announced that would be his last start of the year.  Trouble with fastball location was a problem last night, and when he was getting his heater over the plate, the Marlins were wrecking them. 

The final totals for Strasburg read as follows: 159.1 innings pitched, 15 wins, 6 losses, a 3.16 ERA, 197 strikeouts, 48 walks. 1.09 WHIP, 2.4 BB/9, 11.2 SO/9. He’s 4th in wins, 11th in ERA, 7th in Win-Loss ratio, and 1st in Strikeout per 9 innings, and 2nd in strikeouts. By all stretch of the imagination, it’s been a phenomenal season for the young pitcher, especially when you consider he’s still recovering from Tommy John surgery.

The shutdown has been contentious throughout the sports media, with many national sports media figures calling on the Nationals to ignore the doctors’ advice, pitch him through the limit set by his surgeon and doctor, and keep plowing right through.  Young pitchers don’t burn out, they say; they explode, they say. You only get one shot at the World Series, they say.

These are the striking voices of those who would ignore Stephen Strasburg’s future in exchange for a shot at a world series title. They are the myopic who can only see the next few games, the next month, instead of the future ahead.

Some would say that the Nationals were foolish to charge Strasburg out of the gate, instead looking to Atlanta for an alternative method of rehabbing from the difficult surgery. The Braves have said this week that hurler Kris Medlen will be available through the end of the year and into the playoffs.  Medlen and Strasburg were both operated on in August of 2010, but the Braves opted to prolong and slow his spring training period at the beginning of the year instead of putting him in the rotation out of the gate in April.

This should hardly mark the end of the effective season for the rest of the club, who only benefitted from Strasburg’s excellence every fifth game. The Nationals’s staff leads the NL in ERA (3.30), is third in strikeouts (1140), and has allowed the fewest number of earned runs (460), the fewest walks & hits per inning pitched (1.20 WHIP), and hits per 9 (7.8).  

If you need a defense of the Nationals’ incredible pitching staff, I point you to the Dean of DC Baseball writers Tom Boswell’s column from Labor Day: 

Look at the pitching hegemony the Nats would have brought to bear in the postseason when all teams use four starters. They’d have four of the top 15 in ERA among all starters in the NL. Only one NL team has more than one such pitcher (the Giants).

Also, the Nats would send out four of the top 15 NL starters in WHIP (walks and hits per inning), as well as four of the top 21 in lowest OPS (on-base-percentage plus slugging).

Finally, the Nats would have an overpowering staff with four of the top nine average-fastball-velocities in the NL. That’s almost insane.

…

Oh, I’m sorry. I seem to have made a minor mistake in my calculations. The team I have just described is the Nationals without Strasburg.

It will be frustrating, I’m sure, for the Nationals to be without their most dominant pitcher in the final road to the playoffs and to the World Series, but this will not be the death sentence that so many of the national media have made this into. It ignores incredible contributions from Edwin Jackson and Ross Detwiler, as well as two solid starts from the new fifth starter John Lannan in key positions this year.

This is just the start of a long career for Strasburg, and this shutdown will be good for his arm in the future, but I worry about the effect that this might have on the psyche of the pitcher. Davey Johnson indicated last night that he thought the shutdown might have been weighing heavy on the young pitcher, and that ended with him talking with Strasburg this morning and ending his season.

Instant analysis is hard in a business where the future is so unclear, and made cloudier by the sheer number of different variables facing the entirety of the situation. We shall see in the coming years if this handling of the future of the franchise’s pitching ace will have been the correct choice, or if the Atlanta model that they’ve chosen for Kris Medlen will have better results. I suspect this will be something that causes Nationals’ GM Mike Rizzo a few sleepless nights in the weeks to come. But Rizzo is playing the long game, taking the risks designed to make the franchise a contender for years to come, not win a quick title and ruin some arms along the way. \

Here’s hoping he’s right.

Cowboys10
courtesy of Homer McFanboy

Reading through the season previews for the Redskins and I am struck by something. They are all over the place. There are writers like SI’s Peter King saying he wouldn’t be surprised if the Redskins win a playoff game, and then there are others like ESPN magazine predicting the Redskins to be worse than last season. The latter is as hard to envision as the former. The Redskins made monumental upgrades in the offense. Pierre Garcon and Josh Morgan add a depth to the receiving unit that wasn’t there in 2011, and while RGIII is a rookie he has so much more talent the Rex Grossman or John Beck that he would have to try to be worse than those two.

The big question with the Redskins is if the better level of talent will translate to on-field success. The Redskins in 2011 lost five games by seven points or less. With the improvements made to the receiving core and at the quaterback position they should be able to turn one or two of those close losses into wins. Make no mistake the Redskins are still a flawed team, and no unit has more issues than the secondary. Brandon Meriweather was supposed to step in and take the place of LaRon Landry, but he will start the season hurt. Reed Doughty is a gamer and a solid back-up, but has struggled in a starting role. Especially with the lack of talent the Redskins have across the secondary.

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After a 4-game sweep that had the Nationals embarrassing the Cubs by a collective 31-9, Davey Johnson had a message for the Cubs and the whole of baseball after tonight’s game: “If they’re getting mad at my guys in the 5th inning [for] swinging 3-0 or running, they better get used to it.”

And mad the Cubs were in the third base dugout, as two separate benches-and-bullpen clearing incidents occurred in the 5th and 6th inning that lead to three Cubs ejections (Bench Coach Jamie Quirk, Catcher Steve Clevenger and Pitcher Manny Corpas) and the ejection of Nationals pitcher Michael Gonzalez. What began with words between Nationals third base coach Bo Porter and the Cubs’ Jamie Quirk in the fifth quickly escalated into a fracas that cleared the pens and resulted in blows.

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If Cooley had a Vineyard?
courtesy of Tony DeFilippo

The news broke on Twitter, as these things do nowadays, late yesterday: Chris Cooley was released by the Redskins. Reactions were almost universally negative, and some were pretty despondent. I must say, loathe the Redskins though I do, I always had a soft spot for Cooley.

He was the kind of hard-working player you could only love. His eight seasons with the Redskins have him atop the leader board with 428 receptions as a tight end, and fifth overall in franchise history, and he’s on the all-time depth chart in touchdowns and yards. He has been a solid presence at tight end, a leader on and off the field, and if I had to pick one player that epitomizes the good that remains at the heart of the Redskins while surrounded by Dan Snyder and Mike Shanahan and the rest of the less-than-likable 

His goodbye press conference yesterday is the sort of gut-punch you never want to see in sports, not to anyone, but especially not to someone as special as Cooley. Cooley deserves better than to be cut in pre-season by the team he’s never done anything but love, from draft day all the way forward to his last practice. His goofball routine was charming, especially when contrasted with his serious-as-nails play on the gridiron. His 3-touchdown game against the Cowboys in 2005 sealed the Redskins’ last post-season appearance.

But more than that, he was the kind of human being you’d want to hang around with. This wasn’t the sort of pro-athlete always in the news for the wrong reasons – except once, where an honest mistake resulted in pictures of his wang on the Internet – but rather this was the sort of guy you loved to watch.  Dan Steinberg of the Post cataloged his seven favorite Cooley moments, and all of them are the sort of laid back goofballism you would expect from Captain Chaos.

Here’s to you, Chris Cooley, who could make this die-hard NFC West/49ers fan cheer on the Redskins, just a little bit. Godspeed, and don’t stay gone too long.