Stephen Strasburg, superstar, to make his big league debut Tuesday

In L.A., we’re all Lakers, all the time. The Stephen Strasburg phenomenon hits Washington on Tuesday, and Nationals President Stan Kasten is kind enough to translate the impact into basketball terms.

“All that attention on one player? We don’t have a sport like that,” Kasten said. “We don’t have people coming to games to see Kobe and LeBron. That’s not how our sport works.”

Not until here, not until now. The Nationals season has been nothing so much as a countdown toward Strasburg’s arrival, his every breath in the minor leagues charted and analyzed in the Washington Post and on ESPN. The Nationals’ triple-A team nearly tripled its average attendance when Strasburg pitched, and the Nats sold out his major league debut within two hours of announcing it.

No one wanted to know anything from Kasten except when the wonder child would pitch here, so Kasten spent most of the past two months greeting fans and friends with three words: “I don’t know.”

“Before they could even open their mouths,” he said.

On Friday, the Post breathlessly quoted Strasburg’s mother-in-law talking about his new dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Bentley. The team store features special display racks for the hottest-selling items, the T-shirts bearing the name of the player who is not yet here, Strasburg in red for men ($26), red for women ($27), blue or white for kids ($24).

Nationals Manager Jim Riggleman said he hoped the injured Ivan Rodriguez could catch Strasburg’s major league debut on Tuesday, more or less equating the event with the World Series championship Rodriguez won and the 14 All-Star games in which he played.

“He’s accomplished a lot in his career,” Riggleman said. “This would be another one to look back on.”

This will be a defining week in the history of the franchise, and indeed in the history of baseball in the nation’s capital. No team representing this city has posted a winning record since 1969, when Ted Williams managed the Washington Senators.

On Monday, the Nationals are expected to draft Bryce Harper, the position player version of Strasburg. On Tuesday, their messiah arrives.

Strasburg is the most hyped prospect in baseball history, and we don’t say that lightly. The explosion of baseball coverage — on cable television, websites and blogs — enabled even casual fans to identify Strasburg as the can’t-miss arm in last year’s draft, the San Diego State kid signed by the Nationals for a draft-record $15.1 million.

Versus, the cable channel best known for its broadcasts of the Tour de France, never had aired a professional baseball game until last Thursday, when it showed Strasburg’s minor league finale.

“Every single move he makes is put in the paper and on TV,” Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman said, “things that have never been done for anybody else.”

Nationals outfielder Nyjer Morgan even invented a word in describing the intense attention devoted to Strasburg before his first major league pitch.

“Everything is so microscoped,” Morgan said.

Strasburg made 11 minor league starts. Mark Prior made nine in 2002, in between USC and the Chicago Cubs, with similar statistical domination but not nearly as much anticipation.

“Now you’ve got ESPN 1, 2, 3 and 4,” said Dusty Baker, the former Cubs manager and current Cincinnati Reds manager.

Great line, but Baker wasn’t done.

“And Fox local, Fox national, the Internet, blogs, CNN,” he continued. “Back in my day, the Wall Street Journal didn’t cover sports the way it does now.”

Back in his day, Fernandomania was the talk of L.A., but Fernando Valenzuela actually had to put a few zeroes on the scoreboard first.

“That just built,” said Baker, the Dodgers’ left fielder on that 1981 team. “Fernando didn’t have the hype coming out of the minor leagues. He didn’t have the money coming out of Mexico.

“He didn’t have Scott Boras helping to hype him, either.”

Strasburg didn’t need Boras, baseball’s most powerful agent, to hype his minor league numbers. The Nationals sent Strasburg to the minors in part so they could see how he pitched with men on base, how he responded to getting blown out.

The men on base were few, and the blowout never did happen. He posted a 1.30 earned-run average. In 55 innings, he gave up 31 hits, 13 walks and one home run.

“I’m thinking he’s a special kid,” Morgan said. “He’s going to come up ready to throw fire.”

The Nationals might well have saved a few million bucks on Strasburg’s 2013 salary by waiting until June to call him up, although Kasten said that was “not much of a factor” in the decision. The so-called “super two” arbitration class could be gone by then, Kasten said, negotiated out of existence in the next collective bargaining agreement.

Even if not, Strasburg is guaranteed $3 million in 2012, and we can’t imagine the Nationals would cut his salary in 2013. If he were eligible for arbitration, he might get $10 million that year, but the Nationals could have made up some of that differential in ticket and concession revenue had they had Strasburg skip the minors.

“We would have made a lot more money if he had started here on opening day,” Kasten said.

The Nationals are in last place in the National League East, but the division is bunched so tightly that Strasburg could boost his club into an unlikely pennant race. Roy Oswalt would help too, and the Nats are trying.

Yet the Nationals say they’ll pull the plug on Strasburg after about 100 innings, even if the club is in contention. If he starts every fifth game and averages six innings per start, that could mean yanking him from the rotation around Labor Day.

“We’re doing what’s best for him,” Kasten said, “and what’s best for him is what’s best for the team. His long-term success is the most important thing.”

The long term starts Tuesday, the anticipation building to such heights that infielder Adam Kennedy’s tongue was only partially in cheek in describing the expectations for Strasburg around town.

“Nine innings. No runs,” Kennedy said. “Every game.”

bill.shaikin@latimes.com