Welcome to the Nats, Stephen!

Last year I would have made a joke about the Nationals' run support, but surprise! They rank 16th in the majors in total runs and 8th in OPS. Wow. Maybe it really is the pitching that is holding them back.

With that said, I'm sick and tired of all the "#1 drafted pitchers never amount to anything, so Strasburg will be a bust" articles that keep popping up and spreading around the Internet like genital warts at a music festival. I'm not so blinded by excitement that I think Strasburg is impervious to injury or general suck, but those articles are pointless. So what, 13 pitchers have been drafted #1 and none have been Hall of Famers or Cy Young winners. Big deal. You can say the same thing about the 2nd pick or the 3rd pick, as far as I can tell. The problem is that when you compare 13 guys to ALL THE PITCHERS WHO HAVE EVER BEEN DRAFTED, of course those guys will look bad. Compare all the #1 picks to all the #2 picks or all the #500 picks and you might even see that the #1 picks were better as a group (pure conjecture). Of course, you'd expect that the 1st pick is slightly surer that the 500th pick, but in baseball, that's about all you can say. When you see a guy you like, you take him. Thirteen guys does not a sufficient sample make.

I hope we see Strasburg soon, but until then, his face will haunt my dreams: