I was going to put this as a comment in the recap thread, but understandably the comments closed.

Regarding whether Jarrod has "figured something out" or "turned a corner" or the always-entertaining and mythical "tweaked his mechanics and is doing something different now."  Clearly he is the beneficiary of our new amazing outfield defense, but he's also posting some better peripherals.

He's posting a swinging strike rate of 7.5%, compared to last year's 6.0%, which is a career high from the years available on StatCorner.  His K/9 is up to 5.90 which is also a career high.  His groundballs are slightly up from career average (38.0% compared to 36.2%) and his flyballs are slightly down (40.2% / 43.5%).   LD% is pretty much right in with his career norms. His HR/FB% is at 8.5% which is only slightly lower than his career norms, which makes it seem unlikely he's going to start allowing tons of bombs.

Maybe the percentages I'm quoting here are too small to be relevant, but all this combined amounts to his tRA this year of 5.16, which is silghtly down from his past years in Seattle.  I know the basics of tRA but not the intimate details, I'm guessing the slight improvement in the above peripherals accounts for the slight dip.

So all that being said, I think it's possible in Washubrn's case he actually has figured something out with the new 2-seamer, and while I think he's getting way more credit in the MSM due to the shiny ERA (mostly defense, .248 BABIP), it seems like around these parts he's getting very little credit for some legit improvements.

Last night was fun but obviously that was way beyond his ability - let's give him some credit for actually improving a bit so far this year, though.  Maybe that improvement is too small to warrant a fanpost of this magnitude, but I felt like saying it after the repeated "he's the exact same crappy pitcher with good defense" comments.  He seems to be a slightly less-crappy pitcher with good defense.