Is Washburn great? No, but he’s significantly better than the other options.

To be fair, I second you there, Jeff. Levity aside, if I were a GM of a team on the playoff cusp and had to choose between either Washburn or Sir Sidney at this point in his career for a 4/5 starter, I think I’d probably be taking a look at Wash, too.

How many wins better are you claiming that Washburn is over Ponson or Rasner over the remaining season when you make this statement?

My answer is “not many, but enough”.

I’m not sure I did this right, still getting the hang of WAR, but here’s what I came up with:

Washburn 1.57
Ponson 1.00
Rasner 0.69

(in particular, Ponson being a win above replacement seems optimistic to me)

So Washburn is about a half a win better than Ponson, and about a full win better than Rasner.

Really though, I’m a sucky analyst so take that with a grain of salt; still, the Yankees are in a pretty unique situation.

Can you imagine how badly they’ll get torn apart in the media if the last game in Yankee Stadium isn’t a playoff game?

I just don’t think they can afford to take the chance of letting Ponson stink up another game, or expecting injured players to come back at 100% right out of the gate. Boston and Tampa are just too good.

You know, Scott Boras can talk nearly any team into nearly anything about nearly anybody. If he’s anywhere behind the scenes and anyone’s listening to him, this deal will get done sooner than later.

The Mariners should involve him in the negotiations as some kind of broker, if that’s at all kosher according to MLB rules. He’d likely do a better job than anyone in the M’s front office, IMO.

In fact, maybe they ought to offer HIM the GM position…

One more start by Sir Sidney or Rasner almost guarantees that the Yankees will be watching October baseball on their luxurious home theater setups.

How many wins better are you claiming that Washburn is over Ponson or Rasner over the remaining season when you make this statement?

Our best bet is to give Ponson/Rasner each another start

That’s not something the Yankees can afford to do in the tightest three-way playoff race that division has seen in years.

One more start by Sir Sidney or Rasner almost guarantees that the Yankees will be watching October baseball on their luxurious home theater setups.

It’s also not likely that either Hughes or Wang are going to be 100% when they first come back; with zero margin for error, the Yankees don’t have the luxury of fooling around in the way that you describe.

Is Washburn great? No, but he’s significantly better than the other options. He’s most certainly not our “garbage”.

If you want our garbage, we’ll send you Vidro.

Kiefer Beaver-san

OK, that was funny.

You know we’ve got this all wrong. We shouldn’t be calling into KJR, we should be calling Boston talk radio stations demanding stations demanding Theo trade for Washburn before the Yankees can.

I don’t know how savvy the average Boston fan is, but – Gagne aside – Theo is way too smart to get fooled on a deal like this.

Yes!

One advance scout said that Washburn has been using his splitter more in the past two months.