This is The Referendum. The following piece will present a situation that may be controversial. It is up to you, The People, to decide once and for all which side is right and which is wrong. We encourage reader feedback on all HHSR articles, but we strongly encourage you to share your feedback on The Referendum in the comment section below.
It was hard to watch the the dramatic swings in the sports landscape of our nation’s capital last week and not take notice. On one hand, you had the Washington Nationals, blowing a 2-run lead in the ninth inning to the St. Louis Cardinals, in a do-or-die game five at home in the National League Divisional Series. Less than 48 hours later, you had Robert Griffin III running past as a pretty good Minnesota Vikings team, leading the Washington Redskins to a 38-26 victory in front of the home crowd.
The deprived fans from the DMV area went from seemingly suicidal to a state of ecstasy in the same weekend. Interestingly, the Redskins and Nationals were each faced with a similar dilemma regarding their young superstars that most likely impacted those outcomes, but they approached them very differently.
Coming off “Tommy John” surgery on his pitching elbow, Stephen Strasburg, the 24-year-old phenom of the Nationals was shut down mid-season by general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Johnson. It was decided at the start of the year that Strasburg would only pitch in the neighborhood of 170 innings and would shut down for the rest of the year, including the postseason. This decision was met with some resistance, but became a national story once Washington came out the gate ballin. The Nats won a major league-high 98 games this season and the Strasburg situation suddenly seemed suspect.
On the gridiron, RG3 suffered a concussion two weeks ago on a scramble against the Atlanta Falcons. He passed all of the mandated concussion tests and was cleared to play the following week, albeit against the wishes of some, including his friend, former Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware.
I interviewed my close friend Rob about all this, a native of Virginia, in an effort to understand the psyche of a Washington sports fan as it relates to the Nationals handling of Strasburg and the Redskins handling of RG3.
Sidebar: Rob is a diehard Redskins fan, but is only a casual fan of the Nats (he is a hardcore Baltimore Orioles fan, although his parents home in Virginia is less than an hour from the Nats’ ballpark. His father also has a partial season-ticket plan with the Nats).
Rob described the Washington fan base as very “well-rounded”, given the many teams and sports represented in the area. He also noted that rooting for Washington area teams gives the fan base a sense of belonging, something that they value perhaps more than the average fan base since Washington D.C. is not it’s own state and since Virginia does not have any major pro sports teams.
It’s real out in D.C.
It is no wonder he began our conversation by saying that due to the arrival of Robert Griffin III, the DMV area “hasn’t had this type of excitement in forever”. He praised Dan Snyder’s team for getting aggressive in the right manner (as opposed to overpaying for high-priced, overrated, over the hill free agents) for a change and having RG3 in the fold was like “lighting a stick of dynamite” in the city.
Similarly, the Nationals run this season was a serious shot in the arm for Chocolate City and Strasburg was a huge part of it. An All-Star for the first time in 2012, Strasburg went 15-6 with a 3.16 ERA this season. He was also a strikeout machine, finishing seventh in the National League with 197 despite throwing in significantly less innings, and was instrumental in the revival of baseball in Washington D.C.
Both players are obviously critical to their team’s success, but at 22 and 24 years of age respectively, RG3 and Strasburg mean much more to their teams in the long run than either could this year…
Right?
Well, why then would one team, in the midst of a pennant race, decide to shut down (arguably) their best player/pitcher, while the other team would send out their star quarterback in a standard regular season game in October? Not to mention the fact that Strasburg was recovering from an elbow injury (critical to his profession, but not his life) and Griffin was trying to get over a much more severe injury, a concussion (that is of course is a brain injury).
The nature of each sport is relevant to the decision each team made. We could go deep into the differences between baseball and football, but suffice it to say football is our modern day sport of gladiators. Toughness is lauded; weakness, even perceived weakness, is chastised. My buddy Rob even pointed out that Griffin grew up in a very tough family (both of RG3’s parents served in the armed forces). But Strasburg wanted to play too and made it known. Not to mention, he was actually healthy as he sat in the Nats’ dugout during the NLDS.
As Rob stated, the culture of each sport probably did play a role in each case. The football side of things is fairly obvious (as noted above), but baseball’s history books are riddled Kerry Woods and Francisco Liranos; guys who were dominant early in their careers, but were unable to reach the same heights post-Tommy John. Now that Strasburg has had the surgery on his arm, can you blame the Nationals for wanting to take every precaution to further protect their former #1 overall pick? A guy they invested $15.1 million into (not including a $7.5 million signing bonus) before he’d ever thrown a single pitch?
According to Rob, most Nationals fans were decidedly against this decision to bench Strasburg and many people, the both of us included, could not understand why the Nats decided to limit Strasburg in the way they did. Once they realized they were headed to the playoffs, they could’ve easily shut him down for part of the season and brought him back just before the postseason began. The Nats also could have staggered his starts throughout the season, thus limiting his pitches (a far more relevant unit of measure than innings) without losing him for the playoffs.
Another issue that needs to be examined is the difference in reaction had things gone differently. The Nats sure look dumb after losing in the NLDS with Strasburg riding the pine and the Redskins sure look smart after RG3 did this in crunch time against the Vikings.
But suppose Strasburg re-injures his elbow sometime late in the season or in the playoffs, what would people have said then? What would people think if RG3 had gone down with his 2nd concussion in as many games? How would the narrative be different? You can image the ferocity of the backlash from fans and media had either one of those guys had gotten hurt again. HEADS. WOULD. ROLL.
Sidebar: It’s worth pointing out that RG3 has had at least one concussion earlier in his football career.
Ultimately the Redskins and Nationals’ conundrum comes down to these two questions:
1) Is the price of winning worth the cost of deliberately putting a player in a position where he is vulnerable to re-injury?
And…
2) Which is more in the best interest of the franchise and it’s fan base: winning today, or protecting a star athlete in order to set up the team to win more in the future?
If the team errs on the side of caution, they’re not only showing that they genuinely care about the athlete’s well-being, it illustrates to fans their commitment to winning over the long haul. But again, Griffin III and Strasburg were both cleared by doctors to compete, and as Rob correctly pointed out, RG3’s concussion issue “was not a Colt McCoy situation“. When RG3 suffered the concussion against Atlanta, he did not return to the game. The Redskins followed proper concussion protocol throughout.
Despite the outcome with Washington’s baseball team, Rob believes the Nationals have not jeopardized their fan base by sitting Stephen Strasburg. Many of the individual, group and corporate season ticket packages were already renewed during the season, when the team was riding high. Therefore, the stadium will be full when next April rolls around.
But there is no mistaking the impact RG3 had on the Vikings game and fans will not forget the memory of him sprinting down the sideline in the fourth quarter. That will only further endear him to this community, a community that is in constant search of that belongingness and that star quarterback it needs for their team to take the next step (one they haven’t had in at least 20 years). Luckily, Rob feels the RG3 decision took some heat off of the Nationals, as opposed to shining a spotlight on their decision which may have negatively impacted their playoff run.
Sidebar: The way Rob, with such ease, raddled of the names in the Redskins quarterback graveyard sent chills up my spine.
When asked who made the right decision, Rob says he made up his mind prior to the outcome of the Redskins/Vikings game and the Nationals/Cardinals series: the Redskins handled their injury properly and the Nats (Rizzo and Johnson) botched theirs. In his eyes, it was pretty simple, “What about fans who showed up to each (Nationals) game and shelled out cash? Don’t you owe them anything? If you have chance to win a world series and doctors clear him to pitch and he wants to pitch, why not?” He continued, “If he comes back next year and wins 20 games, great. But if you don’t make the playoffs, who cares?”
#NationalSecurity
While this is all true, the reality is the Nationals played well without Strasburg, a guy who plays just once every five days anyway, and even if he did pitch, there’s no guarantee the Nats get past the Cards (and quiet a kept, he probably wasn’t even the best pitcher on his team this year). But more importantly, you simply cannot ignore the seismic gut-punch that would have leveled our nation’s capital had Strasburg re-injured himself and or increased his odds of re-injury down the road. It’s a miserable feeling for all parties involved and trust, we’ve seen it happen before.
Sidebar: If you think this is the Redskins were clearly right and the Nationals were clearly wrong, go ask the Portland fans about the importance of keeping your stars healthy at all costs.
It’s potentially a multimillion dollar decision that I am happily not making. But it’s something that should be discussed. We all love to play armchair quarterback, or more appropriately, armchair GM or armchair head coach. Of course, no two situations are exactly the same so that’s not worth pointing out. But knowing what we knew about these players and their teams prior to their respective outcomes, did one team make a brilliant move, while the other dropped the ball? Would you have handled each situation differently?
How mad can you get at the Redskins and Nationals? After all, neither guy got hurt.
Let us know what you think.