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The Nationals will pursue Brandon Webb

A pursuit, eh? Hopefully he’ll try to get away by swimming. With that shoulder, they’ll surely catch up to him fast!

The Nationals will be one of several teams to pursue Arizona Diamondbacks right-hander and former Cy Young award winner Brandon Webb, according to someone close to the Nationals. Webb, 31, ranked third in the majors with a 3.13 ERA from 2006 through 2008, but he has not thrown a major league pitch since opening day 2009 because of right shoulder surgery.

Well, that’s certainly way more realistic than chasing after Cliff Lee. Even if it’s nothing approaching a sure thing that Webb will ever be able to get major league hitters out again (and so far, so bad). When you’re Washington, and you’re both unable to develop your own, non-Strasburgian pitchers, and unable to attract top free agents, going after rehab cases isn’t the worst plan in the world. If it works, genius, because Webb was once a great pitcher. If it doesn’t, well, you’re not out too much. That is, unless they do what the A’s did with Ben Sheets and give him way too much money.

This isn’t the first trip to the scrap heap for the Nats, of course. Last year they signed Chien-Ming Wang on the same theory. That bore no fruit, but there are worse approaches than trying to get lucky with a fixer-upper.