No More Waiting For Wake
by Colin R. on Jul.06, 2009, under MLB
The MLB All-Star team was released over the weekend, and as usual there are some snubs and some weird selections, but really nothing egregious happened. Without anything horrible to focus on, I figured I’d take a look at the most positive thing to come out of the 2009 All-Star selections. That positive thing, is Tim Wakefield.
The Bo’ Sox veteran is 42 years old, making him the second oldest first time All-Star in history (Satchel Paige was 46). Wakefield has a long, distinguished career where he’s always been good…but never really great. If you take a look at Wakefield’s career numbers the story tells itself.
Seasons with an ERA under 3.00 -> 3 (’92, ‘95, ‘02)
Seasons with more than 150 Strikeouts -> 3 (’97, ‘03, ‘05)
Seasons with 15 or more wins -> 4 (’95, ‘98, ‘05, ‘07)
So, you really only see a few standout seasons. But if you expand the number out just a little bit, suddenly you realize that this guy really may not be stellar…but he sure is good.
Seasons with an ERA under 5.00 -> 13
Seasons with more than 100 Strikeouts -> 13
Seasons with 10 or more wins -> 11
So what do you do when you’re a solid player, you’ve had a big role in creating a modern baseball dynasty, you’ve won two rings, but you haven’t ever put up numbers that blow the world away? For some pitchers you would simply have to take your championships (hey, not everyone gets them), take your memories, and leave the game when your time is up. But for Tim Wakefield, 17 seasons after being drafted in the 8th round, he finally became an All-Star. If you look at the numbers, you might almost say Wakefield didn’t deserve to be an All-Star on this season alone. He has 10 wins, a 4.30 ERA, 53 K’s, and a 1.35 WHIP. Very impressive, but he’s done better, and so have a lot of guys.
So maybe Wakefield will just never be one of those guys who puts together a single, amazing, statistic-filled season. Maybe there are people who will see this All-Star appearance as a ‘life-acheivement’ type of award, and frankly that’s just fine. If there’s one guy who deserves it, it’s Tim Wakefield.
