Remembering Why I Never Wrote Rebuttals to Henry Cotto in the First Place and Trading Jarrod Washburn

It only took two posts on the Henry Cotto before I realized why I won't be responding to it anymore - the posts are really long and tend to be boring.  So many posts about baseball... I imagine that my experience reading about baseball is akin to the uninitiated reading about soccer.  But I will take this opportunity to write about the one thing that always piques my interest when it comes to the Mariners - trades.

I don't care whether the Mariners are 2 games back or 20 games back when July rolls around. The last person I want to see wearing a Mariner uniform when the calendar tells me it's August 1st is Jarrod Washbun.  I don't like him, I don't like the way he pitches.  I don't like that he has two R's in his name.  Let's face it.  This guy is a fraud.  We know what he's about - getting paid a lot of money to deliver an ERA in the 4.50 range.  Somehow, his lifetime ERA is 4.09.  But if you take out his contract year (2005, he had to be on the juice), and his early productive years when he was 26-28... well, I'll just say that his ERA would go up significantly if I crunched the numbers.  I don't think it's unfair to remove those years and consider them aberrations, since his ERA has hovered in the 4.50 range most years in his career.  It's not like the guy had a sudden drop-off in form.  He's just not very good.

I would love to see him go.  Even if it's for Henry Cotto himself.  Maybe Henry Cotto has a son, or knows somebody that can deliver 200 lbs of steak to the team free of charge.  Both of those are better than more Washburn.

I don't feel the same way about Bedard.  If the man is performing and you can get him to come back, I am all for it.  I love good pitching (mostly because it shortens games that I find boring to begin with).  Bedard may not like to pitch more than 5 innings, but at least the guy has nasty stuff.  And I love that he hates the media.  Adds some spice to an otherwise dull 162-game stretch on the sports calendar.

And another thing.  If they can package Washburn with Beltre, I might get a Jack Zduriencik Fathead to put on my wall.  This guy knows what he's doing.  I still don't know where we got Russell Branyan.  And the outfield is much less frightening this year with Gutierrez and Chavez out there.

I say - Let JZ work his magic, and don't waste your time hoping that this could be a playoff year for the Mariners.  They are terrible on offense.  Trade Washburn, trade Beltre, get Bedard to stick around if you can.  And I will be the calling 1-877-328-8877 to order my JZ Fathead.