Earlier this week, MASN, the team-run cable provider of Washington Nationals games, elected not to renew the option of play-by-play announcer Bob Carpenter, meaning that the network may look for someone else to call next season’s games.

Meanwhile, Carpenter’s former colleague, Rob Dibble, used his Sirius XM talk show this morning to question the club’s motives for having a healing Stephen Strasburg pitch in a Nats uniform before the season ends:

There’s absolutely no reason, other than to sell tickets and to put butts in the seats, to bring Stephen Strasburg back to make a few starts at the end of the season. He’s too valuable. He’s too talented to even think about stuff like that.

Interestingly, MASN canned Dibble late last season after the color analyst criticized Strasburg for not pitching through the pain that ultimately resulted in Tommy John surgery.