subject: Mlb Tickets- Stephen Strasburg Leads Nationals Into Contention [print this page] It's been a long ride for the Washington Nationals franchise and their fans since the team moved from Montreal after the 2004 season. The former Montreal Expos experienced some tough seasons early on, finishing at or below .500 since they moved to Washington. This isn't exactly what the team had in mind when they looked to the Washington D.C. area to improve those fortunes. Expecting to sell thousands of MLB tickets, the team had to struggle for a few more years to get to where they are now.
As odd as it sounds, one of the only benefits of being the worst teams in baseball comes in Major League Baseball's June Amateur Draft. Like the drafts in other major sports, this is where Major League Baseball teams draft for their future. Hoping to draft the next superstar baseball player, teams spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours scouting hundreds of players across the world. There are many great stories of star players taken in the draft, but there are many more stories of "sure thing" players who turned out to be huge busts as well. Unfortunately, the Washington Nationals had the worst record in the 2008 and 2009 seasons, so they chose first overall in the 2009 and 2010 June Amateur Drafts. Luckily for them, these were two of the best drafts in history, at least with the players available. In 2009, the Nationals would select Stephen Strasburg with the first overall pick, while they would grab Bryce Harper with the first pick in 2010.
Coming into the 2009 draft, there was not a question in anybody's mind on any team who the best player available was. The hype surrounding Strasburg was so big that many analysts felt he was the best player ever chosen in the June draft. ESPN labeled Strasburg as the "most-hyped pick in draft history," and Sports Illustrated would call him the "most hyped and closely watched pitching prospect in the history of baseball." The hype would prove to be accurate as Strasburg has dominated every level. In his first Major League start on June 8, 2010, Strasburg turned in a historic performance for his first game, striking out an astonishing 14 batters in seven innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Out of his economical 94 pitches thrown, 34 of them were clocked at 98 miles per hour or faster, including two of them that hit 100 MPH.
While he would miss most of the 2011 season because of Tommy John Surgery on his throwing elbow, he's returned to form and challenged for the position as the best pitcher in baseball. Strasburg, Harper and the rest of the team has the Nationals in contention for the first time in the team's history. Having two of the youngest and most talented players in baseball history in Strasburg and Harper are giving the team what they hope is a successful foundation to a lifetime of success on and off the field. While it's true that there are no "sure things" in baseball, Stephen Strasburg sure is pitching as close as one can to it.
