All-Decade Team: Starting Pitcher

The first four starting pitcher spots on the Wild Things' All-Decade Team were easy to select. In no particular order, Aaron Ledbetter, Jared Howton, Dave Bradley and Ryan Douglas deserved spots. Each helped pitch the Wild Things to the playoffs. With the exception of Douglass, each played more than one season in Washington.

There is no shortage of candidates for the final starter's spot, which speaks volumes about the depth and quality of Washington's starting rotations over 10 years.

There is lefty Tom Cochran, who won 14 games and last year became the first former Wild Things player to make it to the major leagues.

There also is Matt McDonnell, who is fourth on the franchise's all-time wins list with 17 and had a respectable 3.75 ERA over two seasons.

Another candidate is Patrick Stanley, who won eight games in 2006 and had a 2.72 ERA. He also went on to advance to Class AA in the Detroit Tigers system as a starter.

Three pitchers from last year's solid rotation have to be considered. Casey Barnes was third in the league in ERA (2.34). Justin Hall won 10 games and might have been the league's best pitcher at season's end. Justin Edwards spent three years in Washington, won 14 games and was second in the league in ERA last year at 2.16. Edwards did make more appearances out of the bullpen in his career than he did as a starter.

There's also Brian Burks (10 wins in 2005), Matt Squires (10 wins in 2006) and Jeff Sonnenberg, who in 2010 had a 2.97 ERA and pitched a game against Lake Erie in which he faced the minimum 27 batters. And let's not forget Brendon Davis, who was 9-1 as a starter in 2005. Davis, like Edwards, pitched in more games as reliever than starter.

The pick here, however, is none of the above. The fifth spot in this writer's rotation goes to Ben Ally (pictured), a guy who played in Washington during its first two seasons. A right-hander, Ally holds the distinction of being the first Wild Things player to have his contract purchased by a major league organization. That was in 2002, when he went 3-1 with a 2.08 ERA in four starts. He struck out 30 with only four walks in 26 innings before being signed by Houston.

Ally was back in Washington in 2003 and posted a 9-7 record, 3.02 ERA and struck out 124 in 134 innings.

Ally's most impressive statistic? Of his 23 starts, six were complete games and four were shutouts. There's a chance that Ally might have made a difference in the 2002 championship series against Richmond had he still been with the Wild Things. In 2003, he pitched well in a playoff game at Gateway but got no offensive support.

Original Wild Things manager Jeff Isom considered signing Ally to be a coup. Ally had a 1.05 ERA in 2001 in the Philadelphia Phillies' system. It was the second-best ERA among all pitchers with at least 43 innings in Class A. According to Ally, he was released in the spring of 2002 because the Phillies said he looked overweight.

There are now 14 players on the All-Decade Team. At least five of the remaining 10 spots will go to relief pitchers.

All-Decade Starting Pitcher: Ben Ally (2002-03)