Strasburg was experiencing arm fatigue throughout his later outings in the season. Medical personnel associated this fatigue with recovery from Tommy John surgery. Strasburg was also altering his pitching mechanics to account for this fatigue. These mechanical alterations were not only worsening his effectiveness, but they were also increasing his risk for other injuries associated with non-ideal mechanics.

Now, it is arguable that the Nats should have started pitching Strasburg in say June and not April, similar to what the Braves did with Medlen. On the other hand, this would have basically been assuming that the Nats would make the playoffs, an assumption that hasn't proven true since 1933. This is similar to Greenspan's 2001 assertion that we should enact the Bush tax cuts because it was important for financial markets to have treasury bonds, and we would pay off all of our debt otherwise. At the time, the Economist analogized this to a fat man curtailing his diet because if he kept it up, he would be emaciated in 10 years. In short, this was an overly optimistic assumption, and indeed it may have only been valid because Strasburg pitched so well in April and May and allowed the Nats to build a solid NL East lead.