New Era

The only appropriate way to describe that is with the famous Onion headline, replacing a couple words.



Prior to the game, almost everybody was making prediction on what Stephen Strasburg's final line would be. I pulled this:

6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 6 K, 92 pitches

Nobody called this:

7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 14 K, 94 pitches

It was a stunning spectacle. High fives were being thrown around, as were comparisons to all time greats. The game itself was like reliving Kerry Wood's 20 K game, right down to the knee-snapping slurve. Hitters looked foolish, and the man on the mound was always in control. Baseball Reference blog throws out the few other dominating debuts. I had totally forgotten about Tim Hudson bursting on the scene like this. Only the lost careers of JR Richard and Karl Spooner yielded more strikeouts. The most impressive part:

ZERO WALKS!

Truth be told, the Pirates have a young team. Here are two lists.

652, 86, 1300, 602, 606, 1000, 1431, 250. 5927

0, 148, 0, 2335, 519, 0, 1147, 52. 4201

The first list is the number of career major league at bats for the Pirates lineup last night, and the second is the career major league at bats for the Syracuse Chiefs. Your team is in trouble when Lastings Milledge is the grizzled vet.

Strasburg starts will be near, if not sellout the rest of the season. I'll be torn with him going up against the World Cup this month, but that was a very convincing argument.

Nobody has debuted like that before, and it is very possible that nobody will again.