Even though major-league general managers are grown men with facial hair, ugly shirts, and mistresses, we've always imagined them secretly behaving like a handful of high-school cliques. Anytime one commits a faux-pas—Chuck LaMar, late of the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, used to be the master of the outrageous trade…

The Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg for the season on Saturday, and in doing so they, by their own account, deferred to lots of nameless medical experts—"the doctors"—who are definitely not just Scott Boras and his junior partners in lab coats. Nope, no sir.

On Friday night, Stephen Strasburg made his last appearance of the season. The shutdown has come. The Nationals will not use him down the stretch, and they will not use him in the playoffs. The best pitcher on the league's best team will not sniff a moment of the team's most important games.

They are flipping the switch as we speak. Strasburg is 15-6 with a 3.14 ERA, and will finish with those numbers. Strasburg was hit pretty solidly by the Marlins last night (the Nationals lost 9-7 in 10 innings), and today, manager Davey Johnson told the media it would be Strasburg's final start of the season.

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Stephen Strasburg went yard this afternoon in the bottom of the fourth against the Baltimore Orioles. It came directly after Jesus Flores hit a home run making it back-to-back (and a belly-to-belly, some might say) home runs. It was Strasburg's first career home run.

The Stras got knocked around in just four innings of work against San Diego today, and maybe you'd be tempted to write it off as a fluke. Sometimes a guy just has a bad day. But this is Stephen Strasburg, and nothing can make him mortal. Nothing besides, perhaps, burning testicles.

Ump Greg Gibson, behind the plate for today's Nats-Marlins matchup, was in a Very Bad Place today when Wilson Ramos mishandled a Stephen Strasburg fastball and deflected it right into Gibson's groin area. Gibson bounced back rather quickly—most MLB umps wear cups when working the plate, after all—but that doesn't…

Your p.m. roundup for Sept.12, the day Shirley the orangutan quit smoking. Photo courtesy @JesusFloresN26, via Larry Brown Sports. Got any stories or photos for us? Tip your editors.