Why not dream big? Keri:

Jarrod Washburn is the new Cliff Lee.

First, let's address the reasons why a breakout season for Washburn might seem like a long shot.

He's 34.
He's struck out 5 batters per 9 IP (give or take a percentage point or two) in each of the past 6 years.
His walk rates have been tidy but hardly Maddux-esque at 2.5 to 3 a game.
His BABIP this year is a bound-to-regress .224.
His stuff is, was and always be average at best.
He's Jarrod Freaking Washburn.

As a point of comparison, Cliff Lee was five years younger when he had his breakout season in '08, with significantly higher strikeout rates, significantly better K/BB rates, and a dominant fantasy season (and very good, if not quite dominant real-life season) in the not-too-distant past (2005).

The biggest similarity connecting the two pitchers is their extreme flyball rates. Few pitchers in all of baseball put the ball in the air more often than Washburn (0.66 FB/GB rate over the past 5+ seasons) or Lee (0.61 in that same span). Those tendencies leave a pitcher vulnerable to inflated home run rates in a homer-friendly park. Luckily for Washburn, Safeco Field is not Coors Field, keeping his HR rates down to just a tick above average since coming to Seattle in 2006.

The bigger problem for Washburn with the Mariners has been the woeful outfield defense behind him. Specifically the defense in left field. Opposing managers routinely stack their lineup with right-handed hitters when the lefty Washburn takes the mound. That makes flyballs more likely to travel to left field and left-center than anywhere else. As Mariners fans can tell you--while gritting their teeth in agony--left field at Safeco was patrolled for five years by one of the worst defenders in baseball, Raul Ibanez.

Keri ultimately steps back from the Washburn-for-Cy-Young statement (read the whole thing, it's quite good), but joins one of his commenters in granting that Washburn-as-Kyle-Lohse isn't at all unlikely.  I don't know that we should be too thrilled about that, however.