Mr. Reliable.

It took me some time to come around to believing this. Like many people, I saw that Wakefield could be hit...very, very hard on any given day. So I never fully appreciated Wake's ability. It was obvious that he wasn't an ace, for ace pitchers don't get rocked that often. But with my growing understanding of statistics, came my growing appreciation for Tim Wakefield.

So "effective" I thought summed up Wakefield well. Six straight seasons of "league-average" ERA+'s led me to use that word.