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ERA is heavily affected by ballpark and defense. The M's play in a pitchers park and have a great defense, both of which should return (the loss of Beltre will be offset by having a competent fielder man shortstop the entire year). The actual performances of the pitchers weren't that great. Both the rotation and bullpen were patchwork affairs. There was only one pitcher who spent the whole year as a starter and only two relievers who were any good. Fangraphs rated the M's staff as 11th in the AL by WARP. Sean White, Vargas, Batista, Jaku, Silva, French, Roy Corcoran and Olson combined for nearly 500 innings (more than half the teams total) and yet produced NEGATIVE .3 wins! It's going to be easy to get improvement over those guys.
So who is likely to regress? Felix had a big year, but he's a great bet to repeat. He's fully capable of having seasons better than the one he had in '09. Aardsma my slip and Washburn was valuable while he was here, but Ian Snell and Brandon Morrow are also very likely to do a whole lot better than they have so far. Plus, Bedard missed most of the year so whether he comes back or someone else is signed, it will be hard to get less production from our #2 starter. Add Josh Fields and/or Aumont to the bullpen plus a rebound from Shawn Kelley and whatever Aardsma clone Jack picks up and things are looking good.
Basically, this team will likely give up even fewer runs in 2010.