Small Balls: Will the Nats shrink from Boras' price tag?

Stephen Strasburg is a six-foot, four-inch, 220-pound right-handed pitcher who finished his final season at San Diego State University with a record of 13 wins and one loss. Rumor has it that, when he wants to, he can reach back and offer up a 104-mile-an-hour fastball — which might come to a hitter just before he sees what one blogger termed a “two plane break” slider, or maybe what is reported to be an already Major League-average change-up. To parse the vernacular: Strasburg looks to the baseball punditry like “one of the most talented prospects in the 45-year history” of the Major League Baseball (MLB) draft.

Scott Boras is baseball’s Shylock: A convenient scapegoat — thanks to the millions he’s scored for such perceived brats as Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramírez – for the inability of small-market teams to compete for the services of big-name stars, and thus the supposed inequities inherent in the sport’s economic system. In 1997, he encouraged outfielder J.D. Drew (then just drafted) to ignore a $3 million offer from the Philadelphia Phillies in favor of a year’s worth of independent league ball (where he might have made less than $3000 a month) and the possibility of more money in the 1998 draft. The following year, Drew signed for $8 million. This time around, Boras may try to use Strasburg to “redefine the MLB draft.”

The Washington Nationals is the latest incarnation of MLB’s most embarrassing franchise. The team started in Montréal in 1969, peaked in time for the 1994 baseball strike to take away what could have very well been a World Series victory, and thereafter became something of a perpetual turn-to on trade-deadline day. Thanks to a lack of interest at one home stadium, Les Expos tried to cultivate fans at another, splitting home games between their Canadian digs and Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2005, the citizens of Washington, D.C., inherited this festering mess, and, despite an inaugural-season playoff run, they’ve promptly ignored it. Among other indignities, players have had to endure the shame of wearing a home jersey with the name of their team misspelled across their chests.

On June 9th, these three parties were brought together when the Nationals, by virtue of yet another season of futility, selected Strasburg with the first pick in the 2009 draft. What happens next could mean the end (again) for baseball in Washington.

At first glance, Strasburg might seem like the perfect solution to the Nationals’ woes: A gleaming prospect with great stuff, who offers the Nats’ quickly dissolving fanbase something to look forward to as their team challenges baseball’s ultimate pinnacle of failure. But, as Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon notes, the pitcher represents something of “a risky choice.”  For starters, the most recent example of a 180 from a previously-clowned MLB franchise would seem to suggest that the Nats might have to wait 10 years for the results of a careful rebuilding process to start bearing playoff appearances — which is to say that it’s probably going to take more than one guy. And, if that guy’s representation is intent, as veteran baseball analyst Peter Gammons has suggested, on extracting as much as $50 million from his next employer, one has to wonder what sort of impact that guy and his dollars might have on other steps in the team’s restructuring.

As fans watch Boras and the Nats fight over Strasburg, they will no doubt repeat the familiar accusations about the superagent and baseball economics and, with their fingers-crossed, talk about how their would-be franchise-saver doesn’t really want to go pitch for the St. Paul Saints. Still, if the team adds the failure to sign baseball’s next sure bet — and its few remaining season ticket holders are forced to watch him first make fools out of middling independent leaguers and then sign with one of the industry’s powerhouses — what was a problematic-but-stem-able defection could well turn into a more damning finality.

Of course, the Nats’ had to take Strasburg: The fallout from a more prudent selection would have read to the casual baseball fan (and, really, that’s all that D.C.’s got) as a different sort of failure — one that would have resulted in a similar loss of interest. Now, members of the team’s front office have until August 15th to figure out a way to get him into the fold without damaging their immediate collective future. The trouble is that with so much in the way of past and current baseball failure reminding Beltway sports fans that the sport and their city haven’t ever really gotten along — and Boras lurking in the background — the Nats may find themselves forced to overspend just to keep the ghosts at bay.

Worse? That may not even be enough to keep the team in town. After all, it took the last D.C. baseball franchise only about a decade to figure out that things would be better somewhere else. And 2015 is fast approaching.