The Stephen Strasburg era is about to begin as the Nationals beat Tuesday’s midnight deadline to sign the top overall pick by agreeing to a deal for roughly $15.1 million.

Per the Washington Post:

The contract details: Strasburg’s signing bonus is $7.5 million; his four-year deal includes a total of $7.6 million in annual salaries. He gets a prorated share of the league minimum, $400,000, this year. Then he makes $2 million in 2010, $2.5 million in 2011, and $3 million in 2012. A few of the Nats players I’ve talked to or texted with since the deal went down believe — uniformly — that this was an excellent deal with the club, and very reasonable. I don’t think Strasburg will face much animosity within the clubhouse.

Time will tell if Strasburg is worth the money, but for now the Nationals have to be relieved that the contract is done. Agent Scott Boras doesn’t make things easy for clubs, but now that he’s signed Washington can concentrate on the baseball side of things.

Ideally, Strasburg will be on the fast track to the big leagues and even though they could delay his free agency status if they wait to bring him up, the Nats may want him to be in their starting rotation as early as next season. It might be hard to keep him off the big league roster if his high-90s fastball and top-notch slider carve up minor league hitting throughout the winter.

According to a report by NBC Sports, Nationals’ starter Jordan Zimmermann will have to have Tommy John surgery to repair his right elbow injury.

(Acting general manager Mike) Rizzo says Monday that Dr. James Andrews reviewed an MRI exam done on Zimmermann’s right elbow and agreed with a Nationals team doctor that the pitcher should have an operation to repair a ligament.

The team will seek a third opinion before consulting with Zimmermann and his agent on whether to have the surgery.

This is a massive blow to both Zimmermann and the Nationals, who view the 23-year-old as the cornerstone to an up-and-coming starting rotation. If he does follow through with the surgery, he’ll likely miss the entire 2010 season and won’t be ready to rejoin Washington’s rotation until 2011 at the earliest. And of course, there’s no guarantee that he’ll respond well to the surgery.

This is disappointing news for a developing young star like Zimmermann.

Joe Posnanski of SI.com wrote an interesting piece about why the MLB draft doesn’t work as a popular television event.

1. The vast majority of players drafted will never get close to the big leagues. Take the 1994 draft … 15 years ago. There were 287 players taken in the first 10 rounds, and 190 of them — two thirds — did not get a single at-bat or throw a single pitch in the big leagues.

2. Even the players who DO make it will not make it for years. If the NFL Draft is, as the cliché goes, like getting presents on Christmas morning, well, the baseball draft is like getting a savings bond from your grandmother that will mature when you turn 18.

I love the analogy Posnanski used in his second point.

Yesterday I DVR’d the MLB draft and was actually looking forward to watching it. The MLB Network had hyped the event up for a couple of weeks and being a Giants fan, I was excited to see who’d they take at pick No. 6.

But once Bud Selig (who was awful, by the way) read Zack Wheeler’s name at pick six, I realized that I could care less about the rest of the first round. Unless you’ve lived under a rock the past couple weeks, you knew that the Nationals were going to take San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg with the top pick and there was a good chance the Mariners would select North Carolina’s Dustin Ackley (arguably the best position player in the draft) at No. 2. So outside of hearing whom your favorite team picked, there wasn’t much excitement to the draft.

Posnanski is right – the MLB draft as a televised event doesn’t work. I applaud MLB for trying to make the event even a smidgen as popular as the NFL draft, but there just isn’t enough quality substance in the end. As Posnanski points out, most (and that’s not an exaggeration) of the players drafted in the first couple of rounds will never see the big leagues and even if they do, as a fan you have to wait three to four years before that happens. By that time, most casual fans have forgotten where those players came from.

Again, I think it’s great that baseball has embraced the idea of making the draft more of an event. But the reality is that I would rather watch the entire third round of the NFL draft than just one pick in the first round of the MLB draft. And I think others feel the same way.

After the Washington Nationals took San Diego State phenom Stephen Strasburg with the first overall pick of the 2009 MLB Draft, the first question that came to everyone’s mind was – will he sign?

Strasburg’s agent is Scott Boras, who is someone that would rather sell his mother on eBay than not overcharge a team for one of his client’s services. The pre-draft buzz was that Washington is willing to pay whatever it takes to sign Strasburg, but we’ll see what happens when the two sides actually come to the negotiating table.

The second question on everyone’s mind is – how good is this kid?

As a sophomore at SDS, he went 8-3 with a 1.57 ERA and struck out 133 batters in 97.5 innings of work. Four of his 13 starts that year were complete games and two were shutouts. Through May this season, he posted a 13-1 record with a 1.32 ERA and 195 strikeouts in 109 innings pitched.

The scouting report on Strasburg is eye-popping; his fastball tops out at 103 mph, his curve has excellent movement and his slider can clock in the 90s. If the Nationals absolutely needed him to pitch this season (which they don’t – there’s no reason to rush him), some believe that he’s even major-league ready now.

But there’s no such thing as a “can’t miss prospect” and Strasburg isn’t immune to criticism. Some believe he could be the next Mark Prior in that he’s injury prone because he puts too much pressure on his wrist and his elbow comes up too high in his release (which usually signals arm problems down the road). Throw in the pressure that comes along with being the No. 1 overall pick (not too mention a No. 1 pick who will eventually sign for $50-plus million) and all of a sudden you realize that transportation to bustville runs 24 hours a day.

Personally, I hope Strasburg lives up to the hype. The Nationals need him to be great and so does baseball, which is slowly starting to clean up its image. There has been a major buzz surrounding him and fans can’t wait to see him go toe to toe with major league hitters. Here’s hoping he has a bright and successful future ahead of him.