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The Mariners lack starting pitching depth:
My impression of the starting pitching depth chart is as follows:
1. Felix
2. Vargas
3. Millwood
4. Ramirez
5. Iwakuma
6. Beaven
7. Hultzen
8. Walker
9. Maurer
10. Paxton
11. Noesi
Millwood and Iwakuma are both on one year deals, and seem to want the Mariners to be their rebound/career resurrection team. Neither has any ties to Seattle, and nowhere is it written that Millwood and Iwakuma, if they pitch well enough to garner a market, would sign with Seattle rather than somewhere else in 2013.
That leaves three gaping holes in the rotation for next year with a large list of unknowns to fill it.
I've developed a cynical Missourian attitude regarding minor league pitching talent:
Show me!
Pitching seems to rely on two parts, stuff and poise. While both can be scouted, and stuff can be measured to a certainty, poise is a little more ephemeral as a concept and as a science. It is impossible to know how a minor league pitcher will fare when he faces major league adversity.
We've seen some great rookies succumb to the pressure of major league baseball. Noesi being the most recent example.
Yu Darvish, though great, has some sort of mental block when it comes to facing the Mariners.
Even when a rookie is confident and poised, it takes years for him to retool his strategies to something that will work at the major league level. Felix, when he came up, had a tendency to challenge hitters with his fastball, with mediocre results. It took years of tweaking for Felix to become the pitcher he is today: the bendy pitch junkballer who rarely throws anything that is remotely hittable.
Morrow, the scout darling with the fantastic fastball, is just now achieving good results after five years of bad results. What did he do? After leading the league in strikeout percentage and still posting a bad ERA last year, he started throwing with more control this year. His strikeouts have dropped dramatically from 10+ per 9 innings to 7.8 per 9 innings, the lowest of his career. Opponents are achieving dramatically fewer hits with less power against him, and also achieving fewer walks. What did he do differently? He dialed back his fastball for command, rather than just throwing the max effort nuclear heat in the general direction of home plate and living with the results.
Who is to say that Paxton and Walker aren't going to have the same career path? Starring for some other team long after the Mariners gave up on them. We can expect the same growing pains out of our rookies, as even the most polished of them, Ramirez, Beaven, and Hultzen, are going to struggle before they find themselves, and may not be at the top of the world even when they do find themselves.
Which brings us to Jason Vargas:
He. 1. Pitches extremely effectively here; AND
2. Wants to stay here; AND
3. Is a big game pitcher, who rises to the occasion when big games are afoot.
The Mariners should sign him to an extension immediately, pay him what he is worth, and go worry about something else, such as obtaining Justin Upton, and then spending some of that Ichiro/Milton Bradley $30 million.
Another point: Z has brought back so many prospects in mid season trades, that the M's seem to be running out of room for auditions. The M's currently lack:
1. Big bopping first baseman
2. Big Bopping left fielder
3. Shortstop who can hit and field
4. More starting pitchers
Outside of those positions, new prospects would just block the old ones.