Although this is now old news, on Wednesday, the Nationals placed Jordan Zimmermann on the 15 day DL retroactive to July 19th. The official reason that has been given is “elbow discomfort”.  It does not seem to be serious, and if the Nats were in contention I feel sure that he could continue to pitch.  Even though he is only 3-5, Zimmermann has looked good this season. He leads the club in strikeouts with 92, and figures to be the ace of this staff in the years to come. The Nats aren’t going to be making any sort of playoff push, so being cautious and shutting him down for 2 weeks (or possibly 3-4 weeks) is the right thing to do. The last thing that you want is to force him to pitch and injure himself further. We all saw what happened with the Cubs when they pushed Mark Prior and Kerry Wood.

Originally, the plan was to shut him down in August, but now when he comes back from rehab, he will pitch until the end of the year.