ESPN Buster Olney Blog

It was Mark Prior who received the highest signing bonus ever for a drafted player, a $10.5 million deal after being picked second by the Chicago Cubs in 2001. Even at a time when the economy has cut into baseball's attendance, it figures this record will fall after Stephen Strasburg is drafted in June.

Strasburg's leverage will be limited somewhat by the draft process, of course, but the reality is that his talent coupled with the pressures on the team with the No. 1 pick -- the Washington Nationals -- is going to drive up the price.

There seems to be absolutely no debate among executives with picks behind the Nationals that Strasburg is far and away the best player available, and his performance for San Diego State this season has confirmed for all how dominant the right-hander could be in the big leagues. In nine starts for the Aztecs, Strasburg has thrown 63.1 innings, struck out 121 and walked 12, and opponents are hitting .186 against him. Some scouts think there is no debate about this year's draft, as there was when the Twins chose between Prior and a young catcher named Joe Mauer.

"I've never seen as large a gap between the best player and the others in the draft," one talent evaluator said. "There are some good players, but there's nobody close [to Strasburg]."

The right-hander will come along for the Nationals at a perfect time in many respects. Washington desperately needs starting pitching, and if Strasburg ascends in the way many expect, he could be helping the Nationals' rotation sometime this summer.

He also would give the Nationals a badly needed headliner -- someone whose presence could be a lure for a frustrated fan base. Strasburg has the potential to generate the kind of mania once created by Mark Fidrych and Fernando Valenzuela. Casual fans in Washington could pick up a paper or hop online in the morning and see that the hard-throwing phenom was pitching, and they would walk up to see the guy pitch. With all due respect to Ryan Zimmerman and Adam Dunn, the Nationals have never had a player who generated this kind of buzz.

Scott Boras, Strasburg's adviser, will know all this. He will know what's at stake for the Nationals, who were unable to sign their No. 1 pick in 2008. He will know the Washington ownership will be under incredible pressure to draft and sign Strasburg, and he will know the casual fan will view this -- fairly or not -- as a referendum on the Lerner family's commitment to fielding a competitive baseball team.

But there will be some pressure on Boras to get a deal done as well. This past fall, he opined that baseball is generally insulated from the economy. "In our myopic world, there's a lot of fixed elements that frankly are not as applicable to the outside world," Boras told The Associated Press.

It wasn't exactly a Nostradamus moment. Boras has to know that if he holds out for tens of millions on behalf of Straburg, he not only runs the risk of not finishing a deal for a player whose leverage could not be any higher, but he also could damage Strasburg's image in the same way Pedro Alvarez's image was hurt in Pittsburgh last year. At a time when they're calling for bank executive pay limits in Washington, there's not going to be a lot of sympathy for an amateur pitcher holding out for something nutty, like, say, $50 million.

There will be pressure on Strasburg, too. He probably will have the opportunity to get the best deal for any player ever drafted and pitch in the big leagues within a few months -- but he might have to push for the completion of a deal. Alvarez did not do that last August and wound up getting minimal financial reward -- and depending on how you calculate the value of the deal, he might have even lost money -- for a whole lot of headache.

All sides need this to happen. Strasburg is so good that Boras can negotiate a long-term major league contract, and the Nationals can feel good about their chances of getting an immediate return.

After talking with executives and talent evaluators about where these negotiations might wind up, here's one early educated guess: a six-year, $20 million deal.

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