Yet another baseball related article...

The news hit yesterday that Nationals phenom Stephen Strasburg must get Tommy John surgery and will likely be out for 12 - 18 months, if not longer (due to the rehab that would be required after the surgery).  Oh joy.

I posted elsewhere (the Nationals own fan message boards) that this occurence is exactly why I'm incredibly leery of drafting a pitcher so highly.  Even if they are a lead-pipe lock and guaranteed can't miss player, pitchers are so hard to count on as they tend to strain themselves and go all out in their "amateur" career just so they can hopefully get drafted highly, hit the contract lottery and take a bunch of money from whatever team they wind up signing with.  If they wind up needing surgery and are not available for 2 years worth of that contract, no big deal to the player (well, yeah, it is surgery and it isn't easy surgery to get or rehab from) and definitely no big deal to the agent (I'm looking at you Scott Boras!!) as they take the money to the bank while the team loses what was supposed to be an integral part for a couple of seasons, and then just as the player does come back to form they hit find that they're near the end of the contract and likely will cost a lot more money to retain.  Blech.

I have no inside knowledge of how baseball contracts are structured, but I would hope that the rash of issues like this would lead teams and the MLB to require the players and agents to get insurance that is payable to the teams in the event of these type of injuries.  Paying for services that will never be rendered seems stupid to me as a fan that helps to pay the ticket prices that eventually are funneled into player salaries.

I wish for the best for Strasburg.  Hopefully he comes back as good as he seemed to be and from there becomes a regular all-star and future hall-of-famer.  In the meantime I get to watch a team that showed a lot of promise earlier this season as they likely struggle for another season or two