I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I just wanted to hear the guy’s head explode that always reminds everyone, “It was only one game! It was only one game!” when a young player does well in his first career appearance.

And actually, Strasburg did more than “well.”

In his major league debut last night against the Pirates, Stephen Strasburg struck out a franchise record 14 batters over seven innings to pick up his first career victory. His only blemish came in the fourth inning when Delwyn Young took him deep with a two-run dinger to give Pittsburgh a 2-1 lead. Thanks to Adam Dunn’s two-run dinger in the sixth, the Nationals were able to retake the lead at 3-2, before adding two more runs in the eighth to give them a 5-2 victory.

Getting back to Strasburg, perhaps the most impressive stat from his debut (besides the 14 Ks, of course) is the fact that he didn’t walk anybody. That’s impressive considering he’s a 21-year-old kid pitching in a packed house for a franchise that has lofty expectations of him. The amount of control he exhibited was also impressive, as he mowed down the Pirates for seven innings.

Granted, this wasn’t a very dominant lineup he was facing, but so what? He was brilliant and he gave fans a lot to cheer about in his first time out. Who knows where he goes from here, but one thing is for sure: he’s off to a fantastic start.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

The Nationals don’t know the specific date, but the club has tentatively planned for phenom pitcher Stephen Strasburg to make his first major league start sometime between June 8 and June 10 against the Pirates.

From the Washington Post:

“We can know that right up until the moment that we name him to pitch, but we’re not going to announce that,” Riggleman said. “There’s procedural things. There’s other players affected by it. There’s just too many reasons not to announce it. So we’re not going to announce anything.

“It affects a lot of people. I liken it to, whatever, April 3 and opening day is April 5. Who made the club? Who didn’t make the club? And a week later, nobody remembers, because the roster has already changed. When this is all said and done, the fact that we nailed down the date he’s going to pitch and announced it will be a non-entity. It’s going to be all about when he does pitch and people will be excited about it. Leading up to it,. we may or may not announce it. That will be an organizational decision. We have a pretty good idea of when he’s going to pitch.”

One of the reasons Riggleman gave for not announcing the specific date that Strasburg will come up is so that the pitcher he’s replacing isn’t affected. That makes sense given that whoever it is still has one or two more outings under his belt before Strasburg comes up.

Either way, he’s coming up and that’s exciting. The 21-year-old has posted an amazing 0.39 ERA over his first four starts at Triple-A Syracuse and looks every bit ready to start in the big leagues. That said, expectations should still be tempered. The majors have a way of humbling young players (especially pitchers) and even though Strasburg looks special, there’s quite a difference between Triple-A hitters and the ones he’ll face in mid June.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

Of course, it’s not going to be in the majors — the Nationals have money to save!

Instead, Stephen Strasburg, the No. 1 draft pick most of the baseball world has never seen play, will make his minor league debut for the Double-A Harrisburg Senators on Sunday.

From MLB.com:

He’ll pitch against the Pirates’ club, the Altoona Curve, at Blair County Ballpark. There’s an amusement park beyond the walls of the park, but it’s likely the folks of Altoona have never seen a circus quite like the one that’s expected on Sunday. The Curve staff has fielded close to 70 credential requests from nearly 30 different media outlets.

“With this first one, this is his first real professional outing,” Nationals farm director Doug Harris said. “I think organizationally, we want him to walk off the mound in one piece, first and foremost. Let’s get him through it, and let’s move on. I don’t expect to see anything from him different than what he’s done.”

What he’s done unofficially has already created quite a buzz and made everyone in the nation’s capital, and perhaps around baseball, set a Strasburg timer. First he went to the Arizona Fall League and showed the ability to dominate and bounce back from a rough outing.

Then came his first big league Spring Training, where he showed the ability to get Major League hitters out based on his pure stuff. But while there may have been external pressure and expectations to put Strasburg straight into the big league rotation, it’s not something that really entered into Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo’s mind. There’s more to pitching and succeeding at the highest level than just pure stuff.

“We just want to see him develop,” Rizzo said. “Improve each and every outing. Do things that we worked on, things from the plan we want him to work on. People say he’s ready to pitch in the big leagues. I obviously don’t think so, or he’d be here. He needs to put his time in. We want it to be that once he gets to the big leagues, he stays in the big leagues.”

A couple of things here: 1) The Altoona Curve is probably the coolest name for a baseball team I’ve ever heard and 2) The ubiquitous information about the economics of baseball is, by and large, discouraging. On one hand, I willingly spend countless hours reading about front office dealings because, hey, it’s interesting. But the more and more I learn (and this is the same squabble people have with sabermetrics), I feel like my love for baseball is compromised. When Stephen Strasburg finally takes the mound in a big league game, I’m going to know every detail about his structured contract, how the team delayed his service time so they could score an extra year of arbitration, and stats that chart his projected development as it compares to other pitching phenoms. Most of us have never seen him throw, yet we know his agent’s name. I can’t even remember: Is Strasburg the one with the shutdown fastball, or is it a curveball? It’s escaping me, but I can tell you that he received a $7.5 million signing bonus. The great American pastime!

At this point, I’m sure Nationals fans wish they were left in the dark about Strasburg’s contract situation. Bottom line, their system holds possibly the best young pitcher in the game — a kid who’s perfectly healthy — and they’ll have to wait until the front office gives him the go ahead. It’s the waiting that’s the worst.

Photo from fOTOGLIF