Stephen Strasburg’s start is good news for Rockies fans

Strasburg returned to the Nats in basically a years time after having TJ surgery.

Here I sit in the Philippines. For the job that pays the bills I traveled to the Philippines for two weeks for work. While the greater Manila area is nice and crowded one thing I have noticed is that baseball is nonexistent over here. They love basketball and have their own league, the PBA, but not much else.

On ESPN Asia and ESPN News there is a lot of soccer, auto racing of some sort and soon to be a lot of Rugby with the World Cup starting tomorrow. In the early morning hours I have watched quite a few New York Yankees games as ESPN re-airs the YES broadcasts. I have been awake around 4-5am most days here getting ready to brave the traffic and go to work and ESPN’s Baseball Tonight is on. Along with the Internet I have kept up with the Rockies – did Tracy really bat Kouzmanoff in Tulo’s spot the other day? – and watched them fall to 15 games behind the division leading Arizona Diamondbacks (currently 14 thanks to a big eighth inning last night).

With the failure of the Rockies, my crappy fantasy team, the time difference and overall lack of interest in baseball in the Philippines it has been hard to keep up with what has been going on. Of course, being in a new country I would much rather be out seeing the world as opposed to sitting in front of my computer watching baseball highlights anyway. However this morning one highlight in particular caught my eye: Stephen Strasburg pitched yesterday for the Washington Nationals and pitched well.

This is great news for Rockies fans because Strasburg is returning from Tommy John surgery; the same surgery Jorge De La Rosa had on June 3rd, 2011. Strasburg was on the mound one year and three days after having surgery. If De La Rosa can keep that same time table then he will only miss two months of the 2012 season as opposed to the expected three months or more. Even if he takes 13 months to return that is still much better than the 18 months it used to take to recover from the surgery.

This article on USAToday.com also provides some good news and talks more about the recovery time for those who have TJ.

While the light is dim going into the final month of the 2011 season the light might be a little brighter going into the 2012 season.