Ode to the Best Pick We Ever Made

We were price enforcing: $14. Our excel spreadsheet on our computer that said his value was $19. We had already spent $30 on Pedro Martinez, and we had no spot available for that kind of bid on a starting pitcher. In fact, we had no spots planned for ANY additional starting pitchers.

Crickets.

Brandon Webb was ours.

We’ve been in BABI a long time. I could go look up the Klesko thing (my way of determining our first year in the league), but it’s about 15 years, give or take. I’m quite sure we’ve never had a starting pitcher who we drafted onto our team who stayed on our team for four full years, including the extension year.

Those years were glorious.

He was 26 years old, and had just finished his second year in the bigs. He had a great rookie season, and then a traditional sophomore slump in which he had a WHIP problem. His 2004 numbers were: 7-16, 3.59 ERA, 1.50 WHIP. I remember Boof telling me he thought he’d always have control problems.

Here is what we got:

2005 – 229 IP, 14-12, 3.54, 1.26
2006 – 235 IP, 16-8, 3.10, 1.13
2007 – 236.1 IP, 18-10, 3.01, 1.19
2008 – 226.2 IP, 22-7, 3.30, 1.20

He won a Cy Young in 2006, was runner up to Jake Peavy in 2007 and runner up to The Kid in 2008.

Pretty good.

He cost us $14 for the first 2 years and $19 for the last two. We didn’t bid on a $20+ starting pitcher during the past 3 seasons. We’ve been consistently near the top in ERA and Ratio during this time.

It’s a little daunting to start over without him. All we’ve got on our starting staff is $2 Paul Maholm. We’re probably going to have to spend $30 on a staff anchor, a scary prospect, because some of those guys don’t turn out so good. The sad thing is although we were in the money in all four years, we never really cashed in (4th, 7th, 5th, 4th). Too many $23 Chris Duncans, I guess.

I imagine 20 years from now when most of us are at the auction with our portable oxygen tanks, The Doc and I will be telling stories of the great times we had when Brandon Webb was our staff gem. Well, that and our 19 year unbroken streak of 1st place finishes in BABI.