WASHINGTON (AP) — All the protective bubble wrap in the baseball world couldn’t protect Stephen Strasburg from the devastating setback known as Tommy John surgery.The Washington Nationals did all they could to slowly bring along their prized rookie and his invaluable right arm — limiting his pitch count and removing him from games at the merest sign of trouble — but that didn’t stop the 22-year-old from tearing a ligament in his right elbow, bringing an end to a sensational rookie season.The Nationals announced the sobering news Friday. They said Strasburg would travel Saturday to the West Coast for a second opinion, but everyone in the organization has essentially accepted the fact that he will need the ligament replacement operation that requires 12 to 18 months of rehabilitation.“I don’t know if we could have been any more conservative with him,” Washington manager Jim Riggleman said.It’s a setback for Strasburg, of course, and for a baseball world that has spent the summer gasping in awe at his 100 mph fastball, bending curves and wicked batter-freezing changeups, but the biggest blow is to a Nationals franchise that had made the young phenom the centerpiece in their plans to climb out of perpetual last-place irrelevancy.“There’s no words that I can put in place here that would indicate we could possibly replace Stephen,” Riggleman said. “But we have to do it a different way, different names, different staff members who will go out there and fulfill the rotation until Stephen comes back.”Strasburg grimaced, grabbed and shook his wrist after throwing a 1-1 changeup to Domonic Brown in Philadelphia last Saturday.