For the second year in a row the Nats’ top draft pick has won the Golden Spikes Award as the nation’s best amateur baseball player. Outfielder Bryce Harper – who skipped his final two years of high school and played catcher for Southern Nevada College – was the choice.

The award was presented at Major League Baseball’s All-Star Fanfest event in Anaheim, Calif. on Tuesday just a few hours before tonight’s All-Star game. Harper will not turn 18 until October. But against older competition he dominated one of the country’s best junior-college leagues. He batted .443 and set a school record with 31 homers. In the 33-year history of the award only one other junior-college player – Alex Fernandez of Miami Dade Community College – has won it.

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Stephen Strasburg won the Golden Spikes last summer and has immediately justified Washington’s decision to draft him No. 1 overall in 2009. The team will have to be more patient with Harper. The first order of business, of course, is signing him in the first place. Negotiations with agent Scott Boras have yet to begin in earnest with the Aug. 16 signing deadline looming. Last year’s negotiations with Boras on Strasburg’s behalf were finished just seconds before the midnight deadline.