Period and eccentricity of all wide sdB binaries with known orbital parameters is plotted in blue circles. The size of the circle indicates the rotational velocity of the cool companion star. Two stars for which no rotational velocity is known are plotted with blue dots (v_rot = uk). The red and green areas indicate the period–eccentricity range that can be covered by the MESA binary evolution models with eccentricity pumping included as presented in Vos et al. (2015). Models only including phase-dependent mass-loss are shown in red shaded full border, while models that also include a CB disk are shown in green hatched dotted border. The range of the MESA models shown here is truncated at a maximum orbital period of 1350 days and a maximum eccentricity of 0.25.