Washburn Could Use Backing

By Bill Plaschke

July 25, 2005 12 AM PT

His white T-shirt had an American flag on the back, a University of Wisconsin Oshkosh logo on the front.

His jeans were faded. His stare was empty.

Jarrod Washburn stood in front of his locker Sunday afternoon in his usual stoic manner, a Midwesterner working a snowblower, a Packer fan working a tailgate.

He wouldn’t complain about receiving the fourth-worst run support in the league, even after he was stapled with the Angels’ 4-1 loss to the New York Yankees.

“What good is that going to do you?” he said. “All that does is tick off your teammates, and I like most of my teammates.”

He wouldn’t complain, that in his best season yet, with the team’s best earned-run average among starters, he has a break-even record and is considered by some to be merely the third man in the rotation.

“We have a lot of guys pitching well around here this year,” he said. “There’s a lot to choose from.”

Washburn showed no emotion about his current situation until he was asked about leaving it.

Only then, the beard stubble stretched into a wince.

“I’ve said it all along, I want to stay here,” he said.

He paused, and now the beard stubble had formed into a smile.

“There is not a much better feeling in the world than to drive out of here at night and see the Big A all lit up,” he said.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard an Angel player even mention the Big A.

Who knew that any of them ever noticed it? Who would have figured that any of them even cared?

“Like I said, I want to stay here,” Washburn repeated. “But apparently everybody doesn’t have that same feeling.”

He is speaking of Angel management, which has not addressed its most important potential free agent, because, well, that’s just not how they do things around here.

Careful.

Losing Washburn would be like losing a piece of themselves.

If Darin Erstad is the face of this team, and Garret Anderson is its temperature, and Vladimir Guerrero is its heartbeat, then Washburn is its conscience.

He takes the ball. He takes the heat. He takes it seriously.

You want somebody to stare down Barry Bonds in the first game of your World Series? That’s him.

You want somebody to stare down Jose Guillen during the weird outfielder’s last days as an Angel? Him again.

You want to ask a starting pitcher to work out of the bullpen for the first time in five years, in the 10th inning of a playoff game, against Boston’s David Ortiz?

And then, when that player gives up a game-winning, season-ending homer on his first pitch, you want him to swallow it and go home?

That was, again, Jarrod Washburn, who, during his lowest time as an Angel last fall, refused to blame anyone but himself.

“Took me a long time to get over that ... I had to go home, climb a few trees, clear my mind,” he said. “But that was all me. I wanted the ball. I’d want it again.”

He’s on pace to take that ball for at least 25 starts for five consecutive seasons. He doesn’t turn 31 until next month. He’s their only left-handed starter. And he has never been better.

“This is the best I’ve ever pitched,” he said, and if the numbers don’t back him up, the numbing does.

He has twice as many pitches today as when he was drafted by the Angels 10 years ago, and he throws them at a dizzying range of speeds.

No longer is he a kid trying to win with a fastball and a glare. He has grown up. The Angels have grown with him. Just in time, perhaps, for them to part ways.

And people wonder why baseball fans get so angry?

“At the beginning of the year, it bothered me,” Washburn said of the idea of leaving here. “But I’ve come to realize, it is what it is, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

He smiled again.

“I still love every guy in here, and all I want to do is win,” he said.

He pitched like it again Sunday, allowing baseball’s most powerful team to knock only four basehits out of the infield in 7 2/3 innings.

As an example of his newfound versatility, he retired batters on pitches ranging from the mid-70s to the low 90s.

“He’s evolved into a guy who knows what he needs to do to get guys out,” Manager Mike Scioscia said.

Washburn made one mistake, a seventh-inning homer to Hideki Matsui, but even that ball wasn’t hit so hard, it just carried that way in the afternoon air.

He was the first player to congratulate Juan Rivera in the fourth inning after the right fielder threw out Robinson Cano at the plate.

He was one of the last people in the clubhouse, hanging around as always to make no excuses.

He lost the game, but a more important statistic is that the offense has scored only 3.4 runs a game for him, yet he hasn’t had a truly lousy start in nearly three months.

“I’m not afraid to throw any pitch at any count now,” Washburn said. “Maybe make the hitters think a little more.”

And maybe make the Angels think a little more?

Oh, how they are waiting and thinking about this one.

Is this Jarrod going to be as cost-effective as the new Jered, that Weaver kid? Is Washburn worth eight figures when Ervin Santana can pitch for six figures?

With two pitchers already locked up to long-term deals -- Bartolo Colon and Kelvim Escobar -- can they open their wallets wide enough for a third?

These are decisions team officials will make this winter.

But Jarrod Washburn already has made one.

Watch him on the mound, listen to him in the clubhouse, imagine him driving out of the parking lot on a summer night, pausing like few others to admire that giant glowing “A.”

Jarrod Washburn is an Angel. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.