Strasburg Mania!

I got a tip from someone and was able to buy tickets for yesterday's Nats Dodgers game long before it was announced that Stephen Strasburg was going to pitch that day.  This allowed me to get great seats for only $5.50 plus fees from Stubhub.

Earlier in the day, the weather people predicted a 100% chance of rain and that there would be thunder and lightning.  It was not looking good that I'd get to see him pitch.  The reports that I was reading said that if the game was rained out he would pitch during the day of a day night doubleheader the next day.  There's no way I'd be able to make that.  The other thing to worry about was that if there was any rain delay he was not going to pitch either.

We got to the game about an hour early and took our seat.  The tarp was still on the field, but it wasn't raining so there was hope.  Around 6:35 Strasburg made the slow walk to rightfield to the delight of the 3,000 or so fans that were there.  As he came out to warm up the tarp was also removed.  We had good seats to watch him warm up.  We were right on the fence in front of the fair pole on the first base side of the field.  The bullpen was just behind the right field wall.  A lot of people came over to try and get pictures of Strasburg and there was a palpable sense of excitement around us.  He looked good and confident warming up.  I'm sure he had to be nervous, but it didn't show at all.

Here are a few other photos I took of him warming up:

Here are some pics of Strasburg walking from the bullpen to the mound:



Strasburg walking in with Wilson Ramos

Strasburg looked nearly as good as he did before the injury.  The Dodgers were swinging early and often trying to make contact with his fastball and hope that it found a hole.  Dee Brown found one in the outfield and made it to second on his speed.  The other "hit" he gave up was when a ball found a hole in Ian Desmond's glove.  Ian Desmond easily had three errors in the game tonight and was not credited for one.  I think this game is example 1A for why FIP and xFIP are better indicators of pitcher performance than ERA since the subjectivity of the official scorer can make an ERA much worse than it should be.  Anyway, Strasburg was throwing hard.  Most of his fastballs were 96 or 97.  I saw a few 99's on the board.  It seemed like the Dodgers were laying off of his curve and change, but I could be wrong.  He finished with 4 strikeouts on only 56 pitches.  It only rained a little while he was pitching and didn't start raining hard until the 7th inning or so which gave me a perfect excuse to leave early on a work night.  Overall, it was a great experience and I'm glad that the weather cooperated.

Here is a video of the President's Race.  Teddy almost won.