With your ;-) emoticon, you probably know the answer,but just in case it involved $$$$$$$$$$$ and free agency in the future. I don't have time to find a legitimate link, but this link pretty much sums things up the way I understand the situation. Besides, the Nationals weren't expected to go anywhere this year.
"As with many things in life, the short answer is easy: money.
Baseball players become eligible for free agency when they have accumulated 6.00 or more years of Major League service with a team. This is based on the number of days on the major league roster (or disabled list). You can accumulate six years of service in a six years span, or you can bounce up and down for twenty years and never reach this threshold.
There is one wrinkle to this ??“ if you send a player to the minor for less than 20 days, he still gets credit for the entire season. Send him to the minors for 21 days, and he gets credit only for his actual time served.
If you aren??™t grasping the significance yet, it??™s this: if you can keep a guy??™s service time at 5.9 years instead of 6.0 years, you delay his free agency by a year ??“ saving quite a bit of money on the 7th year.
The point of having Strasburg start the season in the minors, then, is to delay his free agency eligibility until after the 2016 season."
http://www.observingcasually.com/why-did-stephen-strasburg-get-sent-to-the-minors/
