I'd like to know the context of Yocum's quote:
The doctor who performed elbow surgery on Stephen Strasburg said he did not tell the Washington Nationals to shut down their ace pitcher.
“I wasn’t asked,” Dr. Lewis Yocum told the Los Angeles Times.
Yocum said he had not talked with Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo since last year and had not talked with Strasburg since spring training.
It's a long-term issue, so any conversation he had with Rizzo or with Strasburg in the Spring still could (and
probably certainly did) address the shut down. Strasburg said he has to trust Dr. Yocum, so the Dr. probably said
something to him related to the shutdown. Just because he says he wasn't asked (and we don't know specifically what the question he said that in reply to was) doesn't mean he doesn't think it's good for him. At any rate, Yocum doesn't sound anti-shutdown:
Yocum said that process — and not any medical directive — essentially determined how Rizzo would proceed with Strasburg.
“It’s based on Mike’s experience,” Yocum said. “Mike is extremely confident. His track record speaks for itself. Zimmermann did extremely well.”
Yocum said the results with Zimmermann and Strasburg might well influence how other teams handle the progress of young pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery, in which a damaged ligament in the forearm is replaced.
“If there was a guarantee, everybody would be doing it right now,” Yocum said. “You just don’t know. This may be the beginning of a trend.”
"His track record speaks for itself" doesn't sound like dissent, does it? Looking at those two quotes I think all he's saying is he didn't say "you need to do this" to Rizzo, and Rizzo didn't ask "I can't make up my mind, what should I do?"
To me it seems like a mountain out of a molehill. If Rizzo developed a plan based on input from Yocum, even if it was a general plan that they applied to Zimmermann, Strasburg, and next Giolito, it's not dishonest for him to say he was consulted. If Yocum knows what guided the decision, he was in the loop. Just because he didn't issue a directive doesn't mean this is all some maniacal conspiracy by Rizzo to keep his best pitcher off the mound for no good reason.