I would buy out Fister's arb years now and tack on his first year of FA. And trade Bedard. A relatively cheap, bona fide innings eating #3 (with upside) will be more valuable to the M's over the next four years than the risky and expensive Bedard.  

I wouldn't trade Fister. With the added velocity, hes now a TOR starter. Hes probably underrated on the market too, and hes a guy you're confident can stay healthy.
I'd want to hand a long-term deal before he figures out how good he is.

Durability for me, also Felix is probably worth a lot less than Pineda now in the market. Only a few teams can trade for Felix, and with NY no longer needing SP there probably isn't a deal out there that makes sense.

by Buster Posey:
http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/blog?name=olney_buster&id=6732605
Jason Vargas, Seattle Mariners. He doesn't possess the stuff of Felix Hernandez orMichael Pineda, but he has become a reliable part of the Mariners' rotation, and in shutting out the Padres on Friday night, Vargas lowered his ERA to 3.57. In his past six starts, he's thrown three complete games and hasn't thrown fewer than six innings in any outing.

And he's just our 4th-best starter, 5th with a healthy Erik Bedard.  He's not a free agent for 3 more years, as well.  Felix is the staff ace and getting paid like it starting next year, Pineda is the #2 being paid basically nothing, Erik is our #3 while being a FA after the season, Fister is our #4 with 5 years of club control left (IIRC) and Vargas is our #5 with 3 more years of club control.  Yowtch.
By FIP:
Felix: 2.82 (5th in the AL)
Pineda: 3.08 (tied for 8th)
Fister: 3.08 (tied for 8th)
Erikkk: 3.50 (19th)
Vargas: 3.58 (21st)
So we've basically got 5 of the AL's top 20 starters pitching for us.  Last year's AA starter of the year (Beavan) is in AAA now and finally has his head on straight (4:1 K: BB ratio, 3ish ERA, 7.5 K/9 last month...basically Fister-ish). We'll see him in a day or two for pitching for Erik.
We had 5 pitchers in the AA All-Star game, most in the Fister/Vargas mold - led by Andy Carraway, but Erasmo is doing well too.  Big thank you to Lance Painter for helping those guys without wicked heat still carve up lineups.
Hultzen will be joining our farm system in about 6 weeks. Paxton just got bumped up to AA and will start there in a couple of days.  Gillheeney may not be far behind as he's been laser-sharp in the Cal League with just the HR bug biting him - the same bug that bit Carraway last year and has disappeared this year in more spacious confines.
Whatcha wanna do? We aren't gonna have a full-court press for rotation spots til 2013, probably.  Do you trade Vargas a year early rather than a year late?  He's not a FA til after the 2014 season, while Fister has 2 more years of club control than THAT.  If one of em gets injured their value drops to zero.  
Meanwhile, none of the up-and-comers are fireballing whiz-kids, Paxton and Walker aside.  Carraway and Beavan are in no one's top-100 prospect list, just as Fister and Vargas weren't, so they won't bring you huge returns until they're doing what Fister and Vargas are doing.
So if you can't get what you need just in free agency, then your most attractive trade possibilities are to cash in arms.  Either you spend the Paxtons and Walkers of the system as headliners...or you use one of your club-controlled guys who are putting a hurting on the major leagues.  Pineda is the most valuable commodity in the organization, but I'm assuming he's untouchable.
Fister is pitching with him stride for stride and Vargas is a complete game warrior with limited downside.
How valuable are they, and when do you decide to cash them in?  The offense is on pace to score, what, 50 more runs than last year?  We all realize that pro-rated we're STILL 50 runs worse than the next-worst AL offense was last year, right?  It's nice of Oakland and Minny to hang out in our neighborhood for the block party this year, but we're 70 runs below league average at the HALF-WAY point so far.  Without Greg Halman of all people we get no-hit last night.  Smoak is starting to crack under the pressure of knowing he has to drive in every run - and so hasn't driven in a run in 2 weeks.
Adding an Alex Gordon to this team makes everything easier.  Do you give up a WAR T-Rex to make that happen?
I don't see how we can avoid it, honestly.  Fister and Vargas have been amazing, and I love them.  And without giving one of them up I'm not sure how we get this all turned around quickly enough for the guys that are left.
Not without emptying out some serious farm pieces, anyway.  So I guess it's take your pick: keep both of Vargas and Fister or keep Paxton and Walker and Seager and some others.
Neither option is perfect, but we can't run an offense like this any more.  If I could trade Fister or (preferrably) Vargas for a young crusher in LF and then sign Prince Fielder, I would do it.
How much better does this offense look with Ackley/Fielder/Smoak/Ethier (or Gordon or Kemp or whomever) at its core, with Halman splitting time in CF, Seager/Kennedy at 3rd and Olivo behind the plate?
Could we win a couple of these phenomenal pitching performances then?  
If you get an offense potentially 5 or 6 deep instead of 1 or 2, then the 4 remaining starters might have a shot to win some ballgames.  And maybe the new #5 could too.
I would investigate that option with all available alacrity.
~G

Fister's trade value is probably signficantly below Pineda's, and hes honestly a much better bet to stay healthy over the next several years.
If you're going to trade from strengh I think it has to be from the volatile Bedard/Pineda pair. Both Fister and Vargas can be locked up cheap long-term and are safer bets to retain value than those two. They also probably don't have the trade value those two have.
Bedard in particular really needs to get his trade value up quickly once he comes off the DL.. I'm hoping the injuries don't scare teams off..

Well said G.
If the M's are going to be good in 2012-2015, starting pitching will have to be the driving force based on who is now in the majors and the best talents we have in the minors.  I plan for success and presume that I have a surplus in starters.  The key to a starter surplus, is that I can be flexible about who I trade, versus who I keep.  I am disinclined to trade Felix, despite his salary, because he's the teams identity.  But if Boston blows me away with what they offer AND it clears $18M off next years payroll, I definitely consider it.
If someone wants to bet on Erik Bedard's ability to win games in the World Series, I trade him.  But if I get a better offer from someone for Doug Fister that places a premium on cost control and health, I make that trade.  Maybe the Dodgers give me Kemp and Ethier for Pineda and Halman to control costs.  I make that trade without a second thought.
The fact is that the M's have put the worst offensive team on the field for two years running and it has not be a product of bad luck or injuries.  They just flat out suck.  Look for the M's to have an average offense this year was going to require most of the following to work out: Olivo to not get killed by Safeco (+), Justin Smoak to demonstrate the scouts were right (+), Dustin Ackley to prove the scouts were right (+), Jack Cust to not be a BABIP artifact (-), Adam Kennedy to surprise (+), Gutierrez to bounce back (-), Ichiro to continue proving he was the model of consistent excellence (-), Michael Saunders to prove the scouts were right (-), Brendan Ryan to demonstrate his glove warranted to carrying a 75 OPS+ (+), Chone Figgins to bounce back (-), and Milton Bradley to bounce back (-).  I count five pluses and six minuses.  Maybe that is a little worse than we could have hoped for, but I would say that a lot of those bets were long shots.
My point in short form is that this offense was bad by design and will remain so without swapping some starters for some position players.  My point is not that doing so will work with perfect fidelity, merely that I think it is much more likely to work than sitting on our hands hoping that we get three out of Carp, Saunders, Peguero, Halman, Gutierrez, Seager, Kennedy, and Figgins to warrant 400 at-bats in 2012 and 2013.  I'd rather swap out one of our starters and hope that one of Hultzen, Bleavan, and Paxton warrant 150 IP by 2013.  You could reasonably argue that all three of them are better bets than all of the position players I just listed.

While I agree that Fister and Vargas look better from a health perspective, they also have the least to lose.  If Fister starts struggling with elbow or shoulder fatigue, what happens when he loses his razor sharp command? 
For me, the only M's pitcher that isn't a big risk going forward in Felix: demonstrated good health to date, takes his profession seriously, could loose A LOT in terms of stuff and still be well above league average.  I mine where do you put the over-under for Felix's WAR before retirement?  50? 
While I think the cost of a player is an important factor in value, GMs do not trade Hall of Fame talents for cost reasons very often (Miguel Cabrera comes to mind).  The Gary Sheffield's and Richie Allen's of the world do get traded on occasion, though that is because they are a pain in the sitter, but for cost reasons. 

Look at Dan Haren, doesn't Fister kind of remind you him, tall, mediocre velocity fastball, great command, good GB%, but Haren has managed 7+ K/9 for his career, often getting into the 8s.  He got traded for Joe Saunders and bullpen help.  But since you're talking about upside, I think Haren is a good place to look.

And 1 starter made it, while I'm sure Dr. D will be peaved that our #2 was League of all people.  It's a bit frustrating that Philadelphia got 3, San Francisco got 3, and nobody is even noting that the Mariners rotation got snubbed, maybe we can send Doug (no way they'll let Pineda pitch there this year) since Felix isn't going to be able to pitch.

The reason to wait to trade until the offseason is to expand your market, but so many teams are close (17 are within 4 games of the division lead) the bidding war could be pretty awesome, not to mention, Michael Pineda could be the beginning and end of a discussion for someone from the floundering teams like the Dodgers.  Not to go down the fantasy path too hard, but Pineda for Kemp would probably be almost automatic for the Dodgers considering the awful situation they're in, it lets them theoretically improve the franchise while letting go of a player due for a huge raise next season (not to mention due another 3 or 4 million this year).

Keep Fister.  Hold on to him and kick and scream about it.
He's a horse.  He's a #1 on a bunch of teams and he's cheap for a long time.
Keep him.  Trade Bedard if you have to and go with Beavan or Pauley or Wright.
But don't trade Fister.
Being pitching rich is different than being OF rich or SS rich.
Build around your 5 year cheap and wicked staff.
I'm not quitting on this year.....but I'm not trading long term cheap big talent for some 3B.
Stay the (pitching) course.  Trust in Carp this year.  Trust in Halman this year.  Trust in Seager, perhaps.  but don't trade fister.
 

The problem with extending Bedard is the 2012 payroll. We can wish for and project a big increase in payroll all we want but the likelihood of a payroll increase next year is scant. There is $$ coming off the books but a lot of the current players - starting with Felix - are in line for raises next year. The club is going to have what - $12-$14 million to spend in FA? Signing Bedard for $8-$10 million of that means hitting the scrap heap or betting on trades for offense again.

If somebody's willing to give me what's behind curtain #2 AND curtain #3 to get Fister and his 120 OPS+ and control through 2016, I have to think about it.  He's the sweet spot between Pineda (fabulous performance, yet-to-be-demonstrated health and stamina, lots of club control) and Vargas (health and stamina, pitches late into games but hits FA sooner and not as consistently dominant even as Fister).
Vargas is also a lefty while Felix, Pineda, Fister and Beavan are all righties, and Bedard will (likely) be on the FA market soon.  Paxton and Hultzen are lefties so we wouldn't necessarily have an entire rotation of righties for long, but Jack likes lefties in Safeco.
I love Fister.  I'm so very happy to see him succeeding, and the dude is everything you'd want out of a guy with his skillset.  Such a bulldog.
Now, the As had this happen with Aaron Harang several years ago, when he'd been interesting but not nearly what Fister has been so far this year.  They had a surplus of arms, though, and dealt him for the big bat they needed...
Jose Guillen.
THAT'S what I don't want to do.  No overpriced 3-month vet rentals for 6 years of a demonstrated talent.
But you aren't gonna get Moustakas for Doug Fister, even if Doug is in line for 15-20 WAR over the next 6 years.  Bats are inherently more reliable than arms.  You'd give up 6 years of Fister for around 3 of a major league bat, at least in my opinion.
If it was 3 months ago we might have had Alex Gordon, but he's gonna be hard to pry out of the Royals now.
Still, there are some options.  
This is not the sort of trade that comes up a lot.  Most teams do not have a surplus of cheap, Major-league-conquering pitching that they can afford to deal, so the parameters of putting a Fister on the market aren't really clear.  I would think a healthy Bedard would be the normal trade option, followed by Vargas, then Fister because his value is so hard to peg.  You'd THINK he'd be one of the most valuable trade pieces in the sport, but by simply going on the market his value gets diminished.  After all, if he were 20 WAR just sitting there for a bargain price, why would we be trading him? So he must not be what he looks like.
Now, the interesting option to me is trading Bedard and League, and then sticking Vargas in the pen to close, but with Jason's lack of experience there and no overpowering weapons, I don't think we'd go that route.  If a guy can go 9 innings no problem then you don't usually ask him to close.
But it would be selling high on League as an All-Star with a year left on his contract, and would help fix our too-many-starters issue.
As would moving Paxton to the pen a la Papelbon.  We DO have options that don't involve trading our current starters.
I just think for a major-league-producing bat we're gonna need to trade either our young guns (Paxton or Walker as the headliner plus a couple of pieces, minimum) or a current rotation member.
We can't keep everyone, and by passing on Rendon for another arm, we created more of a logjam rather than alleviating the issue.  That call plus our lack of other plus bats coming up any time soon kinda forces our hand.
A trade IS coming.  It's just a matter of who stays, and who goes.
~G

Interesting G, interesting.
 
What would a Bedard and League bundle be worth to a contender?
For the right prospect...I'ld do that in a hurry.
Putz is the reliever template of the modern era. We know what happened there.
Unless he throws for the Yankeesa and bamboozles batters with the cutter, I'm am, by nature, untrusting of closers.
interesting bundle.....
 
 

going on the DL...
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120407&content_id=28083828&vke...