Take this for what it's worth, but according to Buster Olney:
ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney tells us the Mariners plan to keep Jarrod Washburn through the trade deadline and hope to persuade him to sign some sort of extension. Olney says the team is hoping to come to some kind of understanding with the lefty, who has taken off under the tutelage of pitching coach Rick Adair. When teams call, however, Seattle will listen. Olney says most rival execs feel the M's are content to hang onto Washburn.
The Yankees and Brewers are both rumored to be looking at Washburn.
Personally, I still think Jarrod will get dealt, and that this is just a bit of posturing or misinformation. However, with the Phillies already having landed a starter and the Brewers looking at playoff odds only slightly better than ours, one has no choice but to consider the possibility that Washburn remains a Mariner beyond the trade deadline. There's been no indication that Jarrod's been aggressively shopped, and though the new front office is pretty tight-lipped about that sort of thing, you'd think it would've eventually gotten out. All we've heard is that Washburn is available, and that's not news.
That bit about "some kind of understanding" is interesting. Makes you wonder if the M's would like to engineer an agreement by which they elect to offer Washburn arbitration and Washburn elects to decline. But that's just blind speculation. The extension suggestion is more noteworthy, and as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of that idea. Now don't get me wrong, Jarrod has his value both on and off the field, and he seems like the sort of guy who'd be content to take a smaller offer to stay where he is, but he's not a special pitcher, and as Dave already outlined, we don't have a whole lot of space in the 2010 budget. Giving a chunk of what money remains to Jarrod Washburn would seem to be a poor allocation of resources.
But because it's just Olney, I won't bother going into greater detail. Basically, the take-home message is this: though there's still a good probability that Jarrod Washburn will be moved before the deadline, there are indications that he could stay put, at which point the Mariners would either (A) try to move him in August, (B) try to sign him to an extension, (C) try to work out some sort of arbitration agreement, or (D) go ahead and lose him for nothing. It's precisely because of point D that I think he'll be traded, but who knows. Zduriencik has surprised me before.