Best Ever?
How does Stephen Strasburg compare?
| By Will Lingo |
| June 8, 2009 |
Stephen Strasburg took the drama out of the horse race a long time ago.
One of the things draftniks enjoy most about following the run-up to baseball's annual selection process—or any draft, for that matter—is trying to figure out where each player will go. And no one is more important than the No. 1 selection.
Well, that decision became obvious a year ago, when he registered a 23-strikeout game against Utah and scouts said Strasburg would have been the top selection in last year's draft had he been eligible.
In case anyone thought that was hyperbole, he went out and dominated for USA Baseball's college national team last summer, going 3-0, 1.06 in 34 innings. Then he plowed completely new ground by making the Beijing Olympic team, becoming the first amateur player selected for a Team USA squad made up of professional players.
He held his own, going 1-1, 2.45 in two Olympic starts, though he did lose a key semifinal matchup to Cuba. And that was the last time he lost. He was 13-0 for San Diego State this season, leading the Aztecs back to regionals for the first time since 1991 and putting up numbers that took the questions about Strasburg's talent from "Best this year?" to "Best ever?"
The buzz of last year's breakout and getting picked for the Olympic team only increased when scouts clocked his fastball as high as 103 mph. But he is much more than that.
Funny thing is, you already knew all this. Even if you aren't a religious Baseball America reader, you couldn't escape Stephen Strasburg this spring if you follow baseball—or sports in general—to any serious degree. He has been featured in every major newspaper in the United States, been on television, been in magazines, been written about on every Website and blog that even pretends to care about baseball. And of course, he has been adopted by the ESPN hype machine.
Even the last Next Big Thing is a little awed by it all.
"I had maybe one national interview that year from a national, mainstream publication, and that was USA Today," Mark Prior says now. (We'll forgive him for not regarding Baseball America as a "national, mainstream publication" because we get the point.) "And while it is USC, we still were getting like 300 people per game. I didn't feel that level of notoriety or pressure cooker when I was in college. I know when Tex (Mark Teixeira) got hurt early that year, all eyes kind of turned to me, but by that point I was already ready and prepared for the draft."
And Prior is not referring to a long-ago time. He's talking about 2001, when he was an ace at Southern California and major league success seemed preordained.
"Now it's so different for him with all the interview requests he must get, and I know some of that is PR and marketing for San Diego State, because they could use it, anybody could really," Prior said. "It's great for them, he's brought them a lot of attention, but that's a lot for a young guy to deal with. Maybe it will help him (at the next level) with dealing with the media, although the media's changing in the big leagues so much."
Prior was Strasburg in 2001. The big college pitcher who had it all, who couldn't miss. Interestingly, Prior didn't go No. 1 overall because the Twins liked Joe Mauer and didn't want to mess with Prior's bonus demands. That didn't stop people from calling Prior's season with Southern California the best ever for a college pitcher, and putting him in the pantheon with the best college pitchers ever.
Prior has not seen Strasburg pitch in person, but based on what he has seen on television and heard and read about Strasburg, he thinks they share similarities, particularly with their fastballs and their ability to command them.
"I was able to live on the outside corner and even off the plate with my fastball in college," Prior said. "It helped me a lot to really have fastball command, and that formula holds true in the big leagues. If you can't command the fastball in major leagues, you'll struggle big-time."
Neither pitcher knew much about struggles as they pitched their way toward draft riches. Strasburg has actually one-upped Prior on that account because Prior did have one bad start during his final college season. Strasburg hasn't had any. The closest he came was having to leave a start early when his back tightened up in the Mountain West Conference tournament, an event that drew national attention.
When asked during the season if he had given any thought to his place in college baseball history, however, Strasburg said, "Not at all."
Then he went out in his final home start—a game that sold out a week beforehand—and pitched a no-hitter against Air Force, another thing that Prior never did. At the end of the regular season he led the nation with a 1.24 ERA and was second behind Arizona State's Mike Leake (who had 14) with 13 wins. His 180 strikeouts in 102 innings put him 48 K's ahead of his closest competitor, and his 15.9 strikeouts per nine also led the nation by a comfortable margin.
"He's further along at 20 than any young pitcher I've ever seen," San Diego State coach Tony Gwynn said. "I didn't see some of the great, great ones, but for a 20-year-old junior to be recognizing that (hitters) are cheating on the fastball and just drop that slider right on them, then a changeup and then a 99 (mph fastball) on the black . . . "
Gwynn didn't finish the thought—and didn't need to—as he shook his head. The question is obvious: Is Stephen Strasburg the greatest college pitcher ever?
From a pure statistical standpoint, it's impossible for today's college pitchers to rack up the victory totals of those from 20, 30 or 40 years ago. The NCAA's compressed schedule meant Strasburg got 14 starts, including the conference tournament. Years ago, it was common for top pitchers to get more than 20 starts, which is how Hawaii's Derek Tatsuno (20-1 in 1979) and Florida State's Mike Loynd (20-3 in 1986) came to share the NCAA record for victories.
But no one puts Tatsuno and Loynd among the best college pitchers in history. In fact, through the draft era it has been rare for the pitcher regarded as the best pure talent to also put up the best numbers in the nation. When the draft era began in 1965, the most dominant pitcher was Ohio State's Steve Arlin, who was nearly unbeatable when he pitched the Buckeyes to back-to-back College World Series appearances. But he was only the 13th pick in the secondary phase of the 1966 June draft.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Texas' Burt Hooton, with an unhittable knuckle-curve, and Arizona State's Eddie Bane, with a devastating curve of his own, also were nearly unbeatable. Bane pitched the only perfect game in ASU's storied history, and Hooton still holds many of the Longhorns' pitching records. Both went straight to the majors out of college—though Bane has gone on to greater fame as the scouting director of the Angels, making just 44 major league appearances in three big league seasons.
"People swore that Floyd Bannister, right after me (at Arizona State), was the best they'd ever seen," Bane said. "I don't think anybody ever said that about me, but the numbers were there."
Bane is one of the few people who has been in the position of potentially being the Next Big Thing to then going out and looking for the Next Big Thing. So he's in perhaps better position than anyone else in the business to sort through what's legitimate and what's hype.
"I thought Greg Swindell (at Texas in 1985) was the best I'd ever seen," Bane said. "And then I thought Ben McDonald (at Louisiana State in 1989) was the best I'd ever seen. And then I thought you couldn't get any better than Mark Prior (at Southern California in 2001)."
McDonald was a seminal figure in the amount of attention he generated leading up to the draft, not to mention his long holdout after the Orioles took him No. 1. John Barr was the scouting director for the Orioles then, and he's in the same position with the Giants now. Having seen both McDonald and Strasburg, he regards them both as standout talents but thinks Strasburg stands out from his peers even more than McDonald did.
"You sit there and you look at it and one of the most dominating starting pitchers I ever saw was Ben McDonald," Barr said. "We were happy and excited that we picked him 1-1, but there were actually other guys—not just from that draft, but even on that LSU staff in Paul Byrd and Russ Springer—that ended up pitching longer in the big leagues.
"That's not to take away from Ben McDonald, because I don't want it to be that way, but even when you have somebody that far ahead, you just don't know what's going to happen. But it was a thrill to watch Ben McDonald in college and as a pro, just like it is to watch Stephen Strasburg."
Two of the most statistically dominating seasons came within the past decade, by Prior in 2001 and by Jered Weaver of Long Beach State in 2004. Prior and Weaver (who interestingly enough was drafted by Bane) both went 15-1.
"I remember watching them as a kid when they were on TV, but I've never thought about their stats," Strasburg said.
And while Strasburg's stats are beyond gaudy, it's his pitches, his velocity and his pro potential that have people so excited.
When San Diego State went to Las Vegas to play UNLV, a fan called the school's sports information department and asked, "Is the guy who throws 140 mph pitching tonight?"
Strasburg has so much more than just velocity, though.
"Speed is an asset, but what does it do for you?" longtime White Sox scout George Kachigian said. "The only time it helps is when you make a mistake, you can get away with it more often. A lot of guys have good stuff, but they can't put it where they want. He can.
"He has the best curveball I've ever seen from an amateur. You get 98 (mph) on the fastball, and then you get that damn curve coming at your knees—late, sharp and big at 84—and you buckle."
So the credentials are all there. Strasburg has the numbers and the talent to establish a strong case that he's the best college pitching prospect ever. For whatever that's worth.
"I don't understand why it isn't good enough to just be the best guy this year. And to that point, yeah, sure he is," Bane said. "He's ultratalented. I don't know if his stats will show that he had the most dominating career of any college pitcher, but I'm sure the case could be made for it."
But Bane already is thinking about what's going to happen next season if the No. 1 pick in the draft is a ballyhooed pitcher and it comes time for contract negotiations.
"We're going to make him the greatest ever of all time," said Bane, "and then some kid is going to come along next year that's not anywhere close to Stephen and that kid's going to say, 'Well, I was the first pick and he was the first pick. . . . ' "
Ultimately, though no one will remember the college stats anyway. Strasburg will be judged on what he achieves in the major leagues, and the debate about the best college pitcher ever will come up again when we run into the next Next Big Thing. As the accompanying sidebar reveals, many of the draft's most hyped pitching prospects had disappointing careers. Pitching by its nature is a fragile pursuit, and the extra burden of expectations weighs heavily.
Anyone who followed the draft in 2001 knows how certain it was that Prior was going to succeed—and how good it looked until he got hurt. Now he's already on his way to being more of a footnote to baseball history than a Hall of Famer.
"I look back at my career—not that it's over—but I look back and see I made nine starts in the minor leagues," Prior said. "And I know I was physically ready for the majors, but I wonder if maybe a half year or three-quarters of a year in the minors might have helped. Not from a standpoint of learning to pitch, but it's what do you do at 150 innings or 200 innings. How do you react? How do you learn to get through that?"
For Prior and those who came before him, the attention didn't really build until they became the first-round pick, the bonus baby, the pitcher whom the franchise was going to build around. For Strasburg, he has already been ordained and he hasn't even been picked.
"If Washington is where he winds up, I hope the pressure isn't all put on him, not because he can't handle it, but I hope that he's not brought in to be made the savior of a franchise. That's too much for any kid," Prior said.
Prior has learned from bitter experience that the accolades mean nothing. Say he goes to Washington; I'm not sure what the Washington media is like, but it would be tough if he went right off the bat to a place like New York, Chicago, Boston or Philly. On the other hand, here in San Diego it's just so different. I was lucky in that I had a good SID at USC in Jason Pommier who helped prepare me some for what I would have to understand, and Chuck Wasserman (sp?) of the Cubs also was very good at giving me a quick intro into what to do and what not to do.
"Because no matter what they write or say about you today, there's always that flip side. You can win seven Cy Young Awards and if you start to lose, they forget about those. It's a very what-have-you-done-for-me-lately deal."
Stephen Strasburg's prelude is nearly complete. And it has been fun. After a summer talking about (and presumably signing for) millions of dollars, though, the real work will begin.
There are so many philosophies and theories on why pitchers get hurt. Everyone has their own argument. I do think that as a pitcher, you have to get to know your own body, and it's easier to do that at the minor league level. I see David Price and the Rays and I see both sides of that argument. If you're David Price, you want to be in the major leagues. If you're the Rays, you have the arbitration and money part of it, but you also want to control his innings, becuase you want to look 4-5 years down the line as well.
"That's again where the fastball command comes into play, because you need to get swings and misses in the zone, either with nasty stuff or by changing speeds. For me, if you're not locating, that's a physical thing, you aren't maintaining your mechanics or something like that. When you're pitching in the major leagues, you have coaches and trainers and lots of support, but you have to be able to manage yourself and know what works for you. There's no cookie-cutter approach that helps everyone work it out. So you probably need that year or half year of growth in the minors.
Contributing: Conor Glassey,Kirk Kenney (San Diego), John Manuel.