As predicted by 5 out of 5 Snake Pit moderators, the Diamondbacks have indeed picked up Brandon Webb's option for the 2010 season! This comes via the FoxSportsArizona twitter feed, and should be confirmed by an actual story soon. [Update: Now confirmed on the AP wire, which adds, "General manager Josh Byrnes says Webb has recovered well from an Aug. 4 arthroscopic surgery on his pitching shoulder."]
Brandon Webb missed nearly all of the 2009 season due to shoulder injury and surgery, making this decision a tough one for the front office. He is due to make $8.5 million next season, the final year of his contract. The Diamondbacks could have bought him out for $2 million, and had until 5 days after the World Series to decide.
Welcome back, Webb!!
Just a quick note or two to add - I'll talk more about it in tomorrow's weekly recap. I liked Nick Piecoro's way of describing it: "The worst-case scenario of exercising it was way better than the worst-case scenario of declining it. Same with the best-case scenario. They might not feel 100 percent confident that he’ll return to form, but it’s a risk that’s worth taking." And speaking of risk, here's a quote from Josh Byrnes that expands a bit on the team's reasoning
There's risk in everything. With the last three months I think some of the risk has been reduced because the surgery went well and Webby's really responded well. I think there's a lot of reward. I mean, you're talking about one of the best pitchers in baseball, so as we made that decision, in our mind, the reward was greater than the risk