As a blogger, I really, really want someone to sign Jarrod Washburn. I’m tired of hearing about him, and I’m even more tired of writing about him. It’s now mid-March, and he’s still a free agent, so naturally, he remains a hot topic with fans. We all know the first part of this story. Jarrod Washburn was a Mariner. He was mediocre. Jarrod Washburn got traded to the Tigers. He was awful. The Twins wanted Jarrod Washburn. The Twins made Jarrod Washburn the best offer he was going to get. Jarrod Washburn turned down this offer. Now no one wants Jarrod Washburn, and we’re less than a month away from opening day.

It’s no secret that he would love to come back to Seattle – he’s stated that on numerous occasions, and at this point in the off season, he’s probably going to come at such a low price that there’s almost no reason not to bring him back. If you sign him at this point, he’s likely replacing a couple months of Jason Vargas, and a few months of Ian Snell (assuming Erik Bedard returns at some point). That means that he’d be coming in to replace roughly 1 WAR. So, the big question is, is Jarrod Washburn still better than a 1 win pitcher? If he remains healthy, I’m inclined to think that yes, he is – after all, he was a 2.7 win pitcher in half a season with the M’s just last year. When you factor in regression, that number probably drops down to around 2, but when you’re in the situation that the Mariners are now in, if you have the opportunity to make your team a win better for a low price, you’d be well advised to take it.

I really don’t buy into much of this veteran leadership stuff, but the fact is, Jarrod Washburn is still better than Jason Vargas or Doug Fister, and he’s almost certainly better than Ian Snell. Do we want him starting in the playoffs? God no, but he could make this team a little bit better as a starter during the regular season, and if the situation should arise, he could relieve in the playoffs. Now, if by some miracle Ian Snell achieves a miraculous turn around, you’re in a little bit of a predicament, but you can always stick Washburn in the bullpen without much regret, as long as you don’t overpay for him.

I certainly haven’t been a big advocate for bringing Wash back over the course of this off season, but at this point, the Mariners might as well just pull the trigger.

The Mariners made their first Spring Training roster cuts today. Real interesting? No. Not at all, but hey, it’s news and something to post. Anyhow, we can pretty much break the cut players down into three groups.

Uninteresting players that we knew had no chance:

Luis Oliveros, Chris Seddon, Steven Shell, Ryan Feierabend

Talented Players that we knew had no chance:

Steven Baron, Mauricio Robles, Josh Fields

and

Players we thought might have somewhat of a chance and are somewhat good:

Nick Hill

I’m a little bit surprised Hill got cut so early – I figured they would at least keep him around long enough to partake in somewhat of a battle for either a long-relief role or the 5th spot in the rotation. Evidently they just don’t feel he’s ready yet, and they’re probably right. Don’t forget about Nick Hill, though, as we’ll almost certainly be hearing about him again. Still battling for those two spots are Jason Vargas, Doug Fister, Luke French, Garrett Olson. The smart money remains on Vargas and Fister making the big league team. We’ll see.

Because there’s nothing else to do, I’m going to be cynical today.

• For a show with awful plot lapses, horrible acting, and the one redeeming quality of awesome singing, Glee is a pretty fun show to watch.  I keep finding myself not wanting to watch it for logical reasons, but it ends up entertaining me every time.  Now back to baseball.

• Why do MLB.com writers write this stuff?  It’s spring training.  This is just unnecessary.  I’d honestly prefer the usual banal stuff about getting into shape and building team chemistry than read something like this. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100309&content_id=8733604&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

• Jason Vargas was fairly sharp today.  He threw about 60% of his pitches for strikes, got six ground-ball outs compared to only one fly-ball out, and got 4 swinging strikes.

• Dustin Ackley has the tools to be a really, really good defender.  Even with very limited experience at second base, he looked no worse than Jose Lopez on any given day.

• Steven Shell is the new Denny Stark.

• The Mariners grounded out a lot more than they flew out.  14 of the former and 3 of the latter.  Too bad it probably doesn’t matter.

• I changed my mind.  Jason Vargas looks like a better candidate for the fifth spot in the rotation than Nick Hill.  I’m officially jumping on the Vargas bandwagon.

• I like how you can tie in Spring Training.  It’s like soccer, except you’re hitting a ball with a wooden bat instead of with your foot.  And the ball is small and hard instead of big and bouncy.  And there aren’t any goals.  But other than that, it’s like soccer.

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that I’ll be on Prorumors.com’s live web show tomorrow night at 7pm PST. We’ll be talking about the Mariners busy off season, chances of contending, the future, etc. Should be pretty similar to the talk I had with the guys at Hotstove.com. They sent me their banner to post, so here you go: