SEATTLE - A few weeks remain before it's known whether Jarrod Washburn's best stretch of pitching since arriving in Seattle is paving his way out of town.
The Mariners have several players they are shopping ahead of the July 31 trade deadline, and Washburn figures to be among them. With roughly $15 million still owed Washburn through 2009, the Mariners have a chance to offload some of that money to a contending team in need of a lefty starter.
And those contending teams will likely have their interest piqued if Washburn continues to perform as he did in a 4-2 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night. The left-hander allowed two runs over six innings, marking the fifth consecutive start in which he has held opponents to that many runs or fewer.
Five of Washburn's past seven outings have been so-called "quality starts" of at least six innings with three or fewer runs allowed. That's the kind of steadiness teams will be looking for to shore up the middle and back ends of a potential playoff rotation.
Washburn had gone seven weeks between wins before notching a victory in San Diego last weekend. He recorded his second win in as many starts on Wednesday, courtesy of a rare power display from backup infielder Miguel Cairo.
The utility man, getting the start at second base, stroked a run-scoring double in the third inning off Toronto starter Dustin McGowan. Cairo then added a second double, this one a line drive to left-center, that brought home a pair of runs and put the Mariners ahead to stay.
A crowd of 23,283 fans at Safeco Field saw Washburn allow baserunners in each of his first five innings. But he usually escaped the jams with timely pitches, including double-play groundouts on Rod Barajas in the second and Adam Lind in the third.
Washburn issued a pair of walks in the fourth inning, but fanned Barajas on a 1-2 offering to keep his team ahead 2-0. That changed, however, in the fifth when Lind smacked a 2-2 pitch over the center-field fence to tie the game.
An ensuing infield hit by David Eckstein put the go ahead run on with nobody out. But that's when Washburn settled down and retired the final six batters he faced.
There is a thought that Washburn, whose best innings usually come before the seventh, would be ideally suited for a National League team. It's fairly common for pitchers to be lifted for pinch-hitters a little earlier in NL games.
Also, the bottom three hitters in an NL order - especially the pitcher's spot - tend to be far weaker than the lineups found in the American League.
The result is that a good, six-inning AL pitcher can often go seven or more frames per start in the NL.
Washburn's recent success tends to back that theory up.
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