Stephen Strasburg, a mere two and a half months after bursting into the major leagues with 14 strikeouts in seven innings in his debut, has a torn elbow ligament and will miss 12 to 18 months after Tommy John surgery.  Baseball fans, and Washington National fans in particular, hope that Strasburg will recover and have many productive seasons. History, though, suggests otherwise. Strasburg, age 21, is one of nine starting pitchers to rack up strikeouts at such a prodigious rate at such a young age. Among the other eight, just three reached 100 wins and none reached 170 wins. And the eight of them had just two effective seasons, combined, after age 30 as starters.  The group of nine young flamethrowers — Strasburg, plus recent rookies Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Oliver Perez and Scott Kazmir, and prior phenoms Bopbby Witt, Dwight Gooden, Sam McDowell and Sandy Koufax — are the only pitchers to have at least 10 strikeouts per nine innings, over more than 50 innings, primarily as a starter, in a season in which they were 23 or younger on June 30 that was one of the first five seasons of their careers. Witt pitched until he was 37, but his last season as an above-average, full-time starter came at age 31. Gooden’s last such season came at age 33; McDowell’s, at age 28. Koufax retired at age 30. Prior was done at age 25. His former teammate Wood is still active, but hasn’t been a full-time starter since age 27. Kazmir and Perez are still active, but both have ERAs above 6 and neither has reached 30.  Pitching so hard, at such a young age, tends to take a toll. Strasburg’s first major-league start ended with seven strikeouts. In the 36 seasons before this year, not a single starting pitcher ended a game with seven straight strikeouts, according to stats analyst Phil Birnbaum; that’s out of 156,684 starts. Let’s hope that Strasburg defies history to have many more such accomplishments.
The Count: Other young flamethrowers who racked up strikeouts flamed out early, usually falling well short of the Hall of Fame.