Did anyone else find it interesting that Strasburg pitched only five innings and 52 pitches against Toledo Monday? Are the Nats trying to slow him down a smidge for the long haul from June through October? It did not seem that Strasburg was being overworked Monday night. He took care of two of the innings on just 15 pitches. Are the Nats telling us they want to save the longer stints for when Stephen arrives in D.C.? The Mud Hens did get a couple of good base knocks against him but were never able to sustain a rally.

Now there have been a ton of rumors that Strasburg will debut June 4 vs. the Reds. This makes the most sense to me, since he would then get another home start against the Pirates on June 9. One Nationals source told me that it might not even be this first weekend of June for Strasburg. I found that a little surprising, but interesting. Everyone has been setting it up as the first week of June, but they could wait. It is possible. The other possibility is a hometown debut versus San Diego this weekend. That's nice and all if you are writing a book, but this one seems the furthest from reality to fly him all the way out to California for that first start. After all the speculation, I'm going to stay with my June 4/June 9 prediction for the faithful hometown Nats fans. It seemed all along that June 1 was the safe date to call up Strasburg, so the Nats would have control of his services for a longer period of time and get the most they could out of the $15.1 million dollar signing bonus. It was also great to see that Strasburg was a little aggravated about being taken out of the game Monday so early. He is a competitor through and through. You want him to be angry every time they take him out of a game. That's what I always love about watching Scott Olsen when he has to give up the ball. He doesn't care if it's the third inning or the ninth inning, he wants to pitch forever. And he is downright mad when they take him out. I see that same fire from Stephen Strasburg.