Let's start with just how great he's been.
Ojeda just wrapped up his 3rd consecutive SL Golden Arm award with a 6.8 WAR season in which he went 15-8 with a 3.31 ERA and 236 K's. This year will be his age 25 season! Is he already a PEBA Hall of Famer after just 5 seasons?
Every PEBA pitcher with at least 3 Golden Arm awards to his name has been elected to the PEBA Hall of Fame. This includes the holy trinity of Hancock, Provost, and Vázquez.
A quick aside on those three. Vazquez and Provost are both right around 80 career WAR. Hancock put up 80 WAR just with Bakersfield. He had about 135 total WAR after 3 Golden Arms and 5 All-Star appearnces in Tempe. So you'd basically need to take Vazquez and add Jim MacCowan or John Turner to get Hancock.
As a second aside, this may just be me, but how much better nicknames are Fireworks and Old Nick than Train Arollin'?
The other two players with 3 Golden Arm awards are Christ York and Conan McCullough.
Here, then, are the 9 players with 2 Golden Arms. You'll see that about half of them are in the Hall of Fame already.
- Manuel Corona - HOF
- Gunner MacGruder - HOF
- Víctor Matos
- John Roach
- Randy Smith - HOF
- Yakamochi Suitani - HOF
- Luppe van Dam - Active
- Cheong-sang Yun - Active
So where does that leave Ojeda? Now that he's won his 3rd straight Golden Arm this year, is he already a lock for the Hall of Fame? I'd love to say that the answer is yes, but is it actually that straightforward*?
This is going to sound like a knock on Ojeda, and it's really not meant to... Ojeda's an excellent pitcher, but he's not (yet?) the kind of dominant starter that many of the other names listed above were. If you look at Ojeda's age and his success so far, you wonder if he's the next pitcher poised to dominate like Hancock, Old Nick, and Provost. However if you look at his WAR numbers, they're signficantly behind what those pitchers did in their heyday. Those pitchers were bottoming out in the 7+ WAR range, regularly topping 9+ (or in Hancock's case, 11+). Ojeda has yet to pitch a 7+ WAR season. His highest seasonal war of 6.8 came this year, so maybe he'll up it as he gets older and be as dominant as those guys, but I don't know.
Here's an interesting fact: Ojeda's best WAR season of 6.8 current ranks 118th in PEBA history for pitcher WAR. It's not even in the top 100! Did you know Bob Burns posted 6.9 WAR in 2026 (as a starter for San Antonio). We've had 44 pitcher seasons of 8.0 WAR or higher.
I think we're currently in a transition period. There isn't really a true ace among the older pitchers anymore. In my mind, Luppe was supposed to be that guy, and he's still great, but his last two seasons combined have been less valuable and he looks like he's merely good now. Shin Seiki's Jorge Castillo has aged better than it looks like Luppe is doing, so maybe he's the elder statesman to look up to. Owen Barse and Roberto Rivera are two others who seem to be performing well as they age. The thing is, none of these guys are holding a candle to the younger generation. None of them go into the season looking like a true Golden Arm candidate.
Look at the starters under the age of 27 that are already better than all of those old guys. In addition to Ojeda you have Florida's Edgardo Trevino and Hen-to Tse, like they need two young aces to go with their offense. Miguel Boroa, who won Golden Arm and went 23-0 last year looks like their 4th best starter from a talent perspective. Hartford has Aaron Goater. Fargo has David García. René Padilla has helped Duluth get to the top of the Great Lakes. Charleston has an overloaded 6-man rotation of guys in the 22-25 age range that have yet to really show themselves. San Antonio has the best young pitching prospect in the league. I've left out a number of guys who I easily could have included (e.g. Pin, McCoy, Maruyama). It's really kind of ridiculous.
So I do wonder how that plays out for Ojeda. Even if he continues to post 6 WAR seasons, that might not be enough to stay atop the league's talent pool. Maybe his timing was good for those 3 Golden Arms, not that he didn't deserve them. Maybe he wins another 3 over the course of his career as he's certainly talented enough to do so. I just don't see him being the favorite year on year like some of the true greats of the past. What I do think is that we're headed into a tremendous era for pitching.
* I do actually think it's that straightforward... the answer is undoubtedly "yes".
