ALIVE!!!!!

Back from a 14-month hiatus, taken while adjusting to the requirement that I work every weekday for nine-and-a-half straight months. In times like those, you decide to either eat or write for the blog that two people read.

Today, the Mariners failed to unload Jarrod Washburn, despite the fact that other humans would pay the remainder of his contract. You can pick any statistic to underscore Washburn's mediocrity since signing a 4-year, $37.5-million contract in 2006.

Let's go with OPS against, which admittedly punishes Washburn for having Yuniesky Betancourt play behind him but he makes half his starts in Safeco, so call it a wash.

2008: .803 (league average hitter .750)
2007: .758 (.761)
2006: .766 (.772)

So basically, the Mariners have chosen to pay a below-average starter $10.35m next year when someone was willing to make it so they didn't have to.

This is like:
1. An attractive woman walks up to you on the street and offers you free, disease-less sex. You aren't busy and are single, but turn her down and instead watch the Magda's tits scene from "There's Something About Mary" on a constant loop while sitting on a bicycle seat.

2. A beer truck crashes near your house. Cases of beer are strewn about the abandoned street and the bed of your pick-up truck is empty. The driver tells you to go ahead and take some; he had a few extra cases because of an inventory error. You decide not to and drink a V8 through your nose.

3. Your long-lost childhood dog shows up at your door after numerous years of being gone. You slam the door in its face and walk inside and pet your armadillo.

Two blogs do the indignation thing a little better: USS Mariner and Lookout Landing.