Even Washington Couldn’t Screw This Up
I wasn’t entirely sure that it was going to happen, but even the lowly and pathetic Washington Nationals couldn’t screw this one up – they got Stephen Strasburg signed with minutes to spare. His $15.067 million contract is a far cry from what lunatic super-agent Scott Boras wanted, but it is still almost $5 million more than any other player has ever got from the draft. The deal includes a $7.5 million signing bonus, and extends through 2012.
This is a deal that had to be made. The Nationals couldn’t have afforded the embarrassment of not signing a player of this caliber. In practical terms it wouldn’t have been a total disaster – they would have been compensated with the second pick next year if the deal hadn’t been done. Still, the second pick next year won’t be anywhere near as good as Strasburg appears to be, and in the mean time they would face the scorn and mockery of their fans, the rest of baseball, and the world in general. They really had no choice. Given that, it’s a wonder that they didn’t end up paying more. Strasburg may have been more expensive than anyone else, but he could potentially be a real bargain. He has definite number one starter potential, and potentially not long from now – especially on a team as pitcher-starved as the Nationals. If he is even remotely as good as he appears then he’s a serious bargain – a number one starter would normally cost significantly more than this much. In fact, he might cost the same for a single year as the Nationals have got him for four. In other words, this could turn out to be a great investment.
The trick, of course, will be to manage him properly. He needs to be brought along with patience, he needs to be handled so that he doesn’t burn out or get injured, and he needs to be placed in situations early on in which he is likely to succeed. The Nationals have given us no reason in their history to assume that they can actually do any of those things, but miracles can and do happen, so maybe it is possible. Whether it is or not, it will be fun to watch.
The flipside of this is that Boras needed to get this deal done as well. He manages to land a ridiculous number of the top prospects every year, but his ability to do that would likely be challenged if he wasn’t able to get the big money for his biggest ever client. There is still a good chance that Strasburg would have been the top pick again next year, but nothing is certain and injuries can happen, so Boras would have been put in an unenviable position. He could bluster and threaten all he wanted, but in the end he needed the Nationals almost as much as they needed his client. That explains why the Nats didn’t have to break the bank nearly as much as people thought he would have to.
All I hope is that the Nationals get Strasburg on the mound at least once before the season ends. I don’t know if that would be the best thing for the player, but it would certainly be the best for the fans.
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