Published 7/4/2009
at Nationals Journal
The most interesting question about the Nats, in what has otherwise been a nightmare season, is to speculate about how good their young starting pitchers will become when they mature. Please, no silly comparisons to the Braves' trio that's going to the Hall of Fame. What is a more realistic comparison for John Lannan, the only young Nats pitcher who, so far, has a large enough statistical sample to project a career? When you watch him this afternoon against the Braves, you might consider that Lannan, both statistically and in pitching style ("crafy lefthander" without a 90+ fastball), has a strong resemblance to seven dependable but generally unspectacular hurlers of fairly recent times. All relied on fastball command, a fine change up, poise and savvy. All of them won 10-plus games at least seven times and some of them did it eight or nine times. All had career ERAs
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