Right-hander Stephen Strasburg has announced his official retirement, according to Washington Post reader Andrew Golden. The decision was made on Saturday and was noted in the transactions log on MLB.com. Neither the Nationals nor Strasburg have made the announcement. According to Golden, Strasburg has agreed to delay part of his remaining money, but he will still receive the $105 million remaining on his three-year, $345 million contract with the Nationals. Although The Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli clarifies that the arrangement does not reduce the total amount of Strasburg’s deal with the team, Golden adds that the details of the deferrals are still unknown.
The announcement brings an end to a protracted tale in which Strasburg’s first plans for retirement, revealed in August of last year, were derailed by a disagreement between the player and the team regarding the balance of his contract. The disagreement allegedly started when the team tried to modify the terms of their original retirement agreement, which called for the right-hander to receive full payment. From a baseball standpoint, it hardly mattered if Strasburg would retire because the 35-year-old has been sidelined from all baseball activities for almost a year due to nerve damage and thoracic outlet syndrome, which has made it difficult for the veteran to do simple tasks like opening doors or picking up his small children.
During his massive agreement with Washington, which followed the righty’s 2019 World Series MVP award for his part in capturing the lone championship in franchise history, Strasburg was only able to make eight starts due to those injuries. The highlight of an incredible 13-year career cut short by injuries is Strasburg’s heroics in 2019, which saw him pitch to an amazing 3.32 ERA while leading the NL with 209 innings pitched in the regular season and then dominating with a 1.98 ERA in 36 1/3 postseason innings that autumn.
With his work at San Diego State University, where he pitched to a stellar 1.43 ERA and recorded 328 strikeouts over his final two seasons in college, Strasburg was among the most heralded amateur talents in the history of the sport when he was selected first overall by the Nationals in the 2009 draft. After making speedy progress through the minor league ranks, he made his major league debut in June of 2010 against Pittsburgh, giving up just two runs in seven innings while throwing a triple-digit fastball and striking out fourteen Pirates.
Tommy John surgery unfortunately cut short the right-hander’s first season, but he still managed to make 12 starts and pitch to an incredible 2.91 ERA with an even better 2.08 FIP. However, Strasburg joined a core group of youthful talent in Washington that included players like Anthony Rendon, Bryce Harper, Ryan Zimmerman, and Gio Gonzalez as soon as he returned to the mound at the end of the 2011 season. From 2012 to 2019, that trio guided the team to eight winning seasons in a row, five postseason visits, and the aforementioned World Series triumph in 2019.
During that eight-year span, Strasburg led the D.C. rotation in starts with 222, posting a 3.21 ERA and 3.03 FIP while striking out 28.9% of hitters faced. Strasburg ranked eleventh in ERA, thirty-first in walk and groundball rates, and fourth in strikeout rate among pitchers with at least 800 innings pitched during that span. He also had the sixth-best FIP and sixth-best strikeout rate. The pinnacle of Strasburg’s tenure with the Nationals ended in 2019 when, with Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin, he guided the team through the postseason series against the Brewers, Dodgers, and Cardinals before the team defeated the Astros in seven games to win the Commissioner’s Trophy.
After the victory, Strasburg chose to test the open market for the first time in his career by opting out of the remaining years of his seven-year, $175 million contract with Washington. In order to retain Strasburg as the face of the team, the team went above and beyond, giving him a contract that would last through his 37th season at the age of 31. The Nationals were forced to embark on a protracted rebuild by the summer of 2021, as Strasburg pitched just 31 1/3 innings of 6.98 ERA ball after that contract went into effect in 2020. It will go down as one of the worst in MLB history.
Few players ever achieve the heights that the three-time All-Star achieved in his major league career, despite the fact that injuries may have ended Strasburg’s career in its latter years. After pitching 1,470 innings, the right-hander finishes his career with a 3.24 ERA (127 ERA+) and 3.02 FIP. During his career, he went 113-62 in 247 career starts during the regular season and struck out 1,723 hitters. In addition to his outstanding career numbers, he has even better postseason numbers, with a 1.46 ERA in 55 1/3 innings of playoff action and a ridiculous 32.6% strikeout percentage.