The Washington Nationals recently announced that righthander Stephen Strasburg would make his final start of the season September 12, and not pitch in the postseason, to which the Nats appear headed.

Did that knowledge affect Strasburg in Friday night’s game against the Marlins, in which he didn’t make it past the third inning? It might have. Mark Zuckerman:

So the biggest takeaway from a wild, 9-7 loss proved to be the manner in which Strasburg’s 2012 D.C. finale played out and the manner in which the right-hander, his manager and others tried to explain what exactly happened.

“To be honest with you, I think he was thinking too much about the decision of what we were going to shut him down,” Davey Johnson said. “And he kind wore it like it. … I think he wasn’t focused as much on the game as he was on the impending shutdown. Just he way I read it.”

Strasburg denied it affected him, saying he just had a bad outing, but this raises the question: with so few innings thrown by him Friday, could he get another start after the 12th?

Strasburg has been slated to make his final start of the season Wednesday in New York. Would Friday’s abbreviated outing make the Nationals reconsider the plan at all?

“It might,” Johnson said in highly cryptic fashion.

Stay tuned.

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