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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2008		Boomer's late-2006 trade to from Boston to San Diego's more favorable environs-hometown team, spacious ballpark, easier league, mellower media-appeared to give Wells a new lease on life. Back in the sand last year, he was a league-average inning muncher through mid-July, making nine quality starts out of 18 for a 4.15 ERA. Then four consecutive bombings convinced the Padres that he was done. Wells conceded the possibility, but after a few weeks of rest and rehab, re-emerged as a Dodger and pitched better than his ERA would indicate (though his two bad starts in blue came during the seven-game skid that quashed the team's postseason hopes). A full year of Wells is probably out of the question, but a budget version of Roger Clemens' typical midseason return could help somebody. He's indicated that he'll retire, but then so did Clemens.
2007		Boomer`s hefty lefty-ness and goofball charm no doubt helped him win friends and influence people in ways Denny Neagle probably should have taken notes on. Still, Wells has moved into the purely mercenary phase of a certain kind of veteran`s career, in which, with the right enticements, he`ll agree to be part of a big-name ensemble cast so that he can still be seen with the right sorts of people. Call it the Shelley Winters career path. Wells insisted he was retiring at the end of the 2006 season, but he`s being wooed with an incentive-laden deal to pitch for his hometown Pads in 2007. He seems to be listening, and he probably should. In uniform, he`s a quirky celebrity. Out of uniform, he`s one of a million unkempt fat guys.
2006		Like the entire rotation, Wells was a league-average pitcher who usually kept the team in games. With this offense, it`s a great recipe for success if you have a good bullpen - which the Red Sox did not. At his request, he was ticketed to move on again this winter, but at press time he was still lodged in Beantown. Maybe the Red Sox balked at paying for oversize shipping.
2005		He ambles around the mound, his belly bulging under his baggy uniform, jersey flapping behind him, untucked and disheveled. As he wipes the sweat from his brow and squints in at the sign, he looks like he'd rather throw down beers than throw to a big league hitter. But when David Wells delivers his sweeping curve or darting fastball, he does so with a surgeon's precision. The Padres did well to patch the rotation with Woody Williams and Darrell May, but they'll still miss Boomer now that he's a Red Sock. His age and health aside, Wells' success in Boston will depend largely on his ability the keep the ball on the ground: His 1.51 GB/FB rate last year was a career high, and either a sign of Wells making a valuable adjustment or a fluke that portends more flyballs in '05, many of them over the Monster.
2004		For the second time in three winters, Wells broke an agreement with one team to sign with another. This time, it was the Yankees left holding the bag, as Wells returned to his boyhood home in San Diego on a one-year deal for less than $2 million. It's not a good pairing; Wells throws strikes and relies on his defense, and the Padres may have the worst collective range in the NL, certainly in the outfield. That table season for Boomer.
2003		The good news is that baseball’s most famous gouty pitcher showed that 2001 was not the beginning of the end. As he’s lost velocity, he’s learned to adapt and rely more heavily on a cutter. Most of all, he gave the Yankees something they needed, a guy who could take the ball just about every fifth day and give the league’s best offense a shot at a win. He should give them that in the last year of his deal as well, after which the Yankees can stop whistling past the graveyard. Was anyone else bemused by the idea that Brian Cashman had to give Wells the talking-to after Wells lost a couple of teeth in the diner slug-and-run incident? What’s next, Orrin Hatch lecturing Nick Nolte on how to stay on the straight and narrow? “Behave yourself. It works for me.”
2002		Wells's weight finally reached the point where it ruined a season for him, contributing to back problems that eventually required surgery. He's apparently healthy and down about 20 pounds, impressive enough for the Yankees to give him a two-year contract. He's 39, still overweight, and has back problems. Wells is not likely to be both effective and healthy; which of the two he's more likely to be is something we won't know until March.
2001		David Wells has reached a point where he just doesn't walk people, and that's the kind of skill that makes it possible to lead the league in hits allowed and still have a good year. The idea that he's an ace is the product of a couple of good run-support years recently, mixed in with his ability to munch innings. At age 38 with a waist to match, he's a bad risk.
2000		Wells declined from his career-year 1998 back to his normal level of performance. He’s a tough call: his age and weight would seem to make him a risk, but his pitch counts are reasonable thanks to his control. His strikeout rates have been constant and he doesn’t miss starts. I expect one more year at around his 1997 level of performance with about 50 fewer innings, then a sharp decline that’s going to look very bad.
1999		The most popular baseball player in New York since the Dwight Gooden/Don Mattingly peak in the mid-1980s. On the mound, Wells has become a power/control pitcher, a deadly combination. Not as much of a flyball pitcher as you'd think, given his penchant for working up in the zone. When he goes bad, he's going to go quickly. A good chance he'll be a terrible free agent signing for someone after the season.
1998		Wells gets a lot of attention for his antics, which hide the fact that he’s become a pretty good pitcher. He’s got a good, hard fastball with movement and he pitches inside to everyone. His style makes him fun to watch, but also means that once he loses a little more off the fastball, he could get hammered. He’s at the age it could happen. Maybe one more good year. Maybe.
1997		Wells proved to be a disappointment for the Orioles, struggling for most of the season trying to find a groove. It wasn’t as bad as people think—the AL of 1996 makes pitching stats difficult to compare with prior seasons—but it does add to the Orioles’ pitcher paranoia.
1996		He doesn't look particularly impressive on the mound; none of his pitches are especially good. Has had problems staying healthy for two years in a row, and after pitching 200 innings last year that is not an encouraging signal.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, David Wells threw 1,651 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system in 2007, including pitches thrown in . In 2007, he relied primarily on his Sinker (86mph) and Curve (70mph), also mixing in a Cutter (84mph), Fourseam Fastball (83mph), Slider (80mph) and Change (77mph). He also rarely threw a Splitter (88mph) and Knuckleball (85mph).