Our Standing on Stephen Strasburg as an All-Star

Last night we turned channels and saw that the Atlanta Braves were taking on Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals on ESPN. We decided to watch a few innings of this marvel of a young player. Strasburg is human, finally he got a few runs scored off of him and finally people can chill out just a little bit on the young phenom.

Personally, I think you could make the case for Strasburg being an All-Star but as we told people back when it first became a question: he can be an All-Star, but if he’s going to get there he better keep up this All-World pace that he’s begun with.

If you’re going to make it to the All-Star game in roughly half of a first half, then that’s how it needs to be done.

The guy is a show-stopper. He’s a phenom. He might be a ‘Hall of Famer in the making’ as Bobby Cox said yesterday. But unless he brings the lulls and is that much better then guys that have earned it for a full half-season, he’s not an All-Star in my mind.

People want to make the case that there aren’t 12 pitchers better then Strasburg in the NL right now. That’s bull shit don’t you think? First off, we don’t know what we have in the guy. It’s the nature of baseball fans and to a larger degree sports fans everywhere to glorify all young players. We did it with Jay Bruce. People have done it with Jason Heyward, Justin Upton. Everyone is the next great one.

Strasburg might be as well. But unless he goes on an all world pace (like, Ubaldo Jimenez-esque) for every remaining start before the All-Star Break, give me a guy like Mike Pelfrey over Strasburg any day.

I’d be willing to bet Strasburg won’t have six wins by the time the game in Anaheim rolls around. I’d also be willing to bet that some kind of horse-shit last minute vote props up on the All-Star Selection show that gives fans 24 hours to send Strasburg to the All-Star game.