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Via Yahooo’s Jeff Passan:

While Mike Rizzo wouldn’t pin down a number, he said Stephen Strasburg will not exceed 180 innings.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 10, 2012

While the Nationals have been saying publicly for a while that they were going to take precautions with Stephen Strasburg, this is the firmest comment yet on just where the line is going to be drawn. The team shut down Jordan Zimmermann after 160 innings last year, so that had been where most guesses were falling, but it sounds like Strasburg will get to make two or three more starts than his teammate did a year ago.

Just doing the basic math, Strasburg is at 127 innings right now, leaving him 53 innings before he gets to 180. Strasburg is averaging 5.8 innings per start, so on his current trajectory, that would leave him with nine more starts this season. The Nationals have 50 games remaining on their schedule, so sticking with a five man rotation and not skipping the 5th starter would leave each member of the rotation with 10 more turns. Without alteration, this limit would essentially take Strasburg to the final week of the regular season, and he’d simply skip his final regular season start and watch the playoffs as a spectator.

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Lee Judge’s blog, Judging the Royals is, well, interestimg. I would have titled it Mock Scout with Lee J., but, surprisingly, I was not asked for my thoughts on the matter. I always imagined my first FanGraphs post on Judge would be for NotGraphs, and I suppose there is still time for that. However, if one can look past the Ron Polk Point System (Hey, Alex Gordon finally passed Eric Hosmer this week!), Judge’s “critical” stance, and other things, there is actually some good stuff in his posts about how players and coaches view the game.

However, today I do not want to focus so much on Judge as something from his comments after last night’s Royals versus Orioles match-up regarding our old friend Jeff Francoeur:

Jeff Francoeur doubled to right in the third, continuing his trend of taking the ball the other way since doing extra work with Kevin Seitzer. Last season Jeff did a better job of getting a pitch out over the plate, and he hit .285, 47 doubles, 4 triples, 20 home runs and had 87 RBIs. Getting back to that approach was part of the message he received during his benching, so seeing Francoeur hit balls hard the other way is a good sign that he’s getting back to last year’s approach.

The first thing I thought of was the Mets’ Tony Bernazard-spearheaded experiment a few seasons go with going to the opposite field more often, which Jack Moore analyzed when it was first reported. Judge does not say whether or not Kevin Seitzer ripped off his shirt and challenged Francoeur to a fight during Francoeur’s (miraculous) benching to work on his approach. Is there any fire to go with Judge’s smoke?

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When Doug Fister broke into the big leagues, he was a soft-tossing, pitch-to-contact change-up artist, who threw strikes with mediocre stuff and projected as a back-of-the-rotation innings eater or a bullpen guy. He wasn’t bad, but the lack of a quality breaking ball and his reliance on his change as an out-pitch meant that he didn’t have anything to strike out right-handed batters with, and he wasn’t generating as many groundballs as you’d expect from a 6’8 guy with good command. Over his first year and change in the big leagues in 2009-2010, he was basically the definition of average, running a 102 ERA-/99 FIP-/99 xFIP- in 232 innings. He limited walks and avoided home runs, so he looked like any member of the Twins rotation over the prior 10 years. Nothing wrong with that, but certainly not a lot of upside beyond strike-throwing middle-of-the-rotation guy.

Then, last year, Fister began to change. His velocity picked up, and instead of topping out at 91-92, he started hitting 93-94 with regularity. By the end of 2011, his average fastball was over 90 mph, up two full ticks over his 2010 average. At the same time, he began to rely less on his fastball/change-up combo, and increased his breaking ball usage, especially against right-handed batters. The increased velocity and pitch mix led to a spike in his strikeout rate, which jumped from 12.9% to 16.7%. In fact, he ended the year with a 28% strikeout rate in September, looking nothing like the pitch-to-contact guy who showed up a few years earlier.

This year, the velocity has regressed back to previous norms — perhaps due to a costochondral strain that landed him on the DL twice — but the strikeout rate has still taken yet another leap forward. Once again, Fister has reduced his reliance on his fastball, and now he’s featuring his curve ball more than ever before. In his start against the Yankees yesterday, he snapped 25 curveballs, 15 of which went for strikes. This big bending curve has now become his #2 pitch, and its effectiveness has been the driving force beyond his second drastic increase in strikeout rate.

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There’s a distinction to be made between the terms “power hitter” and “hitter with power.”

The former typically lives and dies with three true outcomes — maybe only two if they lack discipline. Adam Dunn perfectly represents this group, a hitter who would be nothing without his ability to mash the ball 500 feet. Jose Bautista has other skills, but driving fly balls out of the park tends to define his performance. Other examples include Carlos Pena, Russell Branyan, Mark Reynolds.

And then you have the hitters with power. These are the guys the scouts note for their “hit tool” first and their mammoth power second. They can do it all — make contact, draw a few walks, and it just so happens that when they make contact the ball goes pretty far too. Think David Wright, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Robinson Cano, Ryan Braun.

Prince Fielder broke into the majors as a power hitter. He struck out often thanks to his uppercut, all-or-nothing swing. But over the last few years, we’ve seen him reshape himself as a hitter with power.

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After last night’s victory over the Mariners, the Orioles announced they were calling up top prospect Manny Machado from Double-A and giving him the third base job for the stretch run. Wilson Betemit hasn’t been a total disaster, posting a 100 wRC+ in 356 plate appearances, but he’s one of the worst defensive players in baseball and is dreadful against lefties, so moving him into a 1B/DH platoon isn’t a bad use of his skills.

The promotion is still a bit of a surprise, however, as Machado is a teenager whose numbers in Double-A don’t suggest that he’s ready to start hitting Major League pitching right away. A .266/.352/.438 line isn’t all that different from what Betemit is doing, and of course Machado is posting that line against inferior pitching. But, despite the mediocre looking slash line, there are reasons to think that Machado might be more ready for the big leagues than the raw numbers suggest.

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Melky Cabrera is having a career-year. After posting 4.2 WAR last year, Cabrera has once again been effective. The 27-year-old outfielder has already passed that total this season, accumulating 4.8 WAR so far.

Cabrera’s performance comes at a great time for him. At the end of the season, he can become a free-agent. And it looks like he’ll have a chance to hit the market, since the San Francisco Giants have put off negotiations with him until then. Cabrera’s two-year breakout is also interesting since he’s never produced like this before. All of those factors make Cabrera one of the most unique players to hit the market in quite some time. Because of that, no one is really sure how much he’ll make.

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The Brewers current rotation might be the most fascinating group in baseball at the moment. With Chris Narveson and Shaun Marcum on the DL and Zack Greinke in Anaheim, the team has had to turn to three unproven big league starters to fill out their rotation – Mike Fiers, Marco Estrada, and Mark Rogers. Generally, when you move a guy from the bullpen to the rotation and call up two kids from the minors, the results aren’t great, but Fiers, Estrada, and Rogers have been fantastic, and the team hasn’t seen a real drop-off by going with the kids.

Fiers has gotten the most attention, as he’s run off nine straight starts with at least six innings pitched while allowing two runs or fewer, posting a 1.03 ERA over that 61 inning stretch. And, certainly, Fiers story deserves to be told, especially considering his 88 mph fastball and general lack of pedigree as any kind of top prospect. His eye-popping 5/1 K/BB ratio without big time stuff has made him a central topic of discussion, and rightfully so. However, when I was looking at the list of guys who have posted similar statistical seasons to Fiers, I couldn’t help but notice that Estrada was on that list too.

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On Tuesday evening, 39-year-old Bartolo Colon handcuffed the Los Angeles Angels for seven innings, only surrendering a single unearned run in his final inning of work.

Although that unearned run ended his consecutive scoreless inning streak at 22.1 innings, he does currently maintain a streak of 22.2 innings without surrendering an earned run. The last earned run given up by the right-hander came on a solo home run by the Yankees’ Curtis Granderson on July 22 in Oakland. Since that home run … nothing.

Extended stints without allowing an earned run are not uncommon in Major League Baseball. After all, Ryan Dempster threw 33-consecutive innings without surrendering an earned or unearned run in July.

Instead, the intriguing aspect of Colon’s streak lies in his pitch selection and how he is finding success on the mound.

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The news came down yesterday: The Blue Jays’ Drew Hutchison will undergo Tommy John surgery, and Dustin McGowan will have arthroscopic shoulder surgery. By itself, the news wasn’t very remarkable — McGowan has been injury-riddled his entire career, and elbow surgeries are relatively commonplace.

Except that Hutchison will be the third pitcher on the Jays to get Tommy John surgery this season. He’ll be the sixth pitcher to go under the knife, period. The devastation has been so complete in Toronto that they might be on their way to setting records.

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During Jean Segura’s six year minor league baseball career, he has proven to be a very productive player when healthy. After missing a substantial amount of time in 2011, the young shortstop has rebounded with a .304/.358/.413 line in 2012 including a scorching .433/.500/.533 over his last ten games prior to being promoted. As the key piece in a deal sending Zack Greinke to Los Angeles, the Milwaukee Brewers are counting on Segura’s minor league numbers translating into major league production on the middle infield. Having seen Segura during his last two starts for Double-A Huntsville of the Southern League, I’m confident the Brewers have acquired a talented — but unrefined — player. Segura is likely to need additional seasoning at the minor league level before cementing himself as an everyday player.

Video below the jump

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