Stephen Strasburg scheduled for Red Wings rehab start at Frontier Field against Bisons

Rather than watching the Washington Nationals’ top pitching prospect make his scheduled start Friday night for the Rochester Red Wings, fans at Frontier Field will instead get to see the parent team’s best pitcher, 2019 World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg.

Cade Cavalli, coming off two excellent outings, will cede the mound to Strasburg as he makes his third rehab stint on his way back from neurogenic thoracic outlet surgery which cost him almost the entire 2021 season plus the first two months of the struggling, last-place Nationals’ 2022 season.

The oft-injured Strasburg has pitched twice for Class A Fredericksburg and has an ERA of 3.52 across 7.2 innings, so the Nationals believe he’s ready to step up and test himself against Triple-A hitters.

Last season, Strasburg made two April starts for Washington before going on the injured list with shoulder inflammation. When he was ready to return, he made one minor league start on May 16, pitching for the Wings against Buffalo in Trenton, New Jersey where the Bisons were playing home games in the first half of the season.

That day he went a promising 4.1 innings and gave up just two hits in his lone game for the Wings. However, when he went back to Washington, he made three starts and had to leave the last on June 1 in the second inning. At that point he was shut down for the rest of the season and underwent surgery.

This will be Strasburg's second appearance at Frontier Field. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 draft started here on May 19, 2010 for Syracuse, then the Nationals' top farm club. A crowd of 12,590 saw Strasburg pitch 6.1 scoreless innings and gave up just three hits while striking out nine.

Three weeks later, he made his much-ballyhooed MLB debut, beating Pittsburgh while striking out 14 batters in seven innings.

As for Cavalli, the Nationals top pitching prospect who is hoping to make his MLB debut at some point this year, he was supposed to start Friday for Rochester, though it’s possible he could be used in a tandem with Strasburg who will surely be on a pitch count. Or, the Wings might just push Cavalli to Saturday night.

Cavalli has certainly had a bumpy road in Rochester as he learns how to pitch against Triple-A batters — his ERA is a robust 5.58 with a 1.264 WHIP. But since an awful outing May 17 when he gave up five runs and was knocked out by Lehigh Valley in the first inning, he has been outstanding.

Against that same Lehigh Valley team in his next start, Cavalli gave up just one run on one hit while pitching into the sixth inning. Then Saturday at Syracuse, he had his best Triple-A performance as he pitched seven innings of two-hit, shutout ball while striking out six.

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This week’s schedule is off kilter because while Monday is usually a day off for all minor league teams in this era of six-game Tuesday through Sunday series, Monday was a play day because of Memorial Day and the chance to draw a big crowd, while Tuesday was the off day. With 8,978 on hand at Frontier Field, Buffalo defeated Rochester 7-5.

The series between the top two teams in the International League East was supposed to resume Wednesday night but the rain forced a postponement.

This may seem a bit hard to believe given how long the Wings and Bisons have been playing Triple-A baseball, but these two neighboring franchises have not finished 1-2 in the IL standings since 1949.

That could be changing in 2022, though, as the Wings sit atop with a record of 31-18, the Bisons are drafting just behind at 30-18, and both teams are on a roll as last week the Wings took five of six in their series at Syracuse while Buffalo won five of six at Columbus.

“They’ve got a good team and we’re evenly-matched in a lot of places,” Rochester manager Matt LeCroy said after Monday’s game.

Buffalo dominated the Wings last season, winning 20 of the 29 games, but this year, the teams are much closer in talent and Monday’s win gave the Bisons a slim 4-3 edge in the 2022 series.

Obviously, it’s tough to look too far into the future when it comes to Triple-A because the respective parent teams - the Nationals and Toronto Blue Jays for the Bisons - will have so much say on how the rosters will look moving forward. For instance, the Nationals just called up star infielder Luis Garcia who has played such a key role in Rochester's fast start.

But there’s a chance that there will be a fun Thruway skirmish taking place between these two teams for the first time in nearly three quarters of a century.

You remember that 1949 season, right? Opening day saw the second-largest crowd in team history as 18,681 passed through the turnstiles at the old ballpark on Norton Street by season’s end, the Wings led all of the minors in attendance at 443,536

The IL was an eight-team circuit and Buffalo, then the Triple-A club of the Detroit Tigers, finished first with a record of 90-64, four games better than the Wings who were then supplying players for the St. Louis Cardinals.

That Wings team was led by the dynamic duo of Russ Derry and Steve Bilko. Derry hit a still-standing team record 42 home runs and had 122 RBI for an OPS of 1.039. Bilko led the team with a .310 average and belted 34 homers and 125 RBI with an OPS of 1.006.

On the pitching side, Cloyd Boyer - who was the older brother of future major league standouts Clete Boyer and Ken Boyer - had a 15-10 record with a 3.13 ERA while Tom Poholsky went 14-10 with a 3.69 ERA.

Yeah, you don’t see numbers like those anymore in the minor leagues.

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However, since that 1949 season, the Wings and Bisons really haven’t come close to battling each other for a league title, though it must be pointed out that from 1970 to 1997, they were not in the same league.

The Bisons, in fact, were out of minor league baseball completely from 1970-78, then returned as a Double-A franchise and played in the Eastern League through 1984.

They were bumped up to Triple-A in 1985 but played in the old American Association until 1997 before rejoining the International League and rekindling a Thruway rivalry with both Rochester and Syracuse.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. 

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Stephen Strasburg scheduled for Red Wings rehab start at Frontier Field