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If we were warranted in using the "career year" explanation, then either 1) there had better be a pattern of improvement in the final years of a contract (which there isn't) or 2) we'd have to have some other evidence to the effect that this case was the exceptional career year (which as far as I know, we don't have).  This can all be true and it still be the case that Wash IS having a career year.
Further, I'm not using any abstract "there is no evidence that X is true so we shouldn't believe X paradigm" (that we can save for another discussion, but for the record I don't actually endorse it since there can be a large number of cases where it's better for a person to have false beliefs).  I'm pointing directly to what would count as evidence of some player having a career year (note that 2 could include a huge number of plausible explanations whether they are countenenced by sabermetricians or not including and not limited to a dinner conversation with Wash where he admitted that he decided to turn things on this year so that he could make a buck) and then pointing out that we haven't satisfied either of these constraints.  This all has nothing to do with some view about the legitimacy of elites.  I couldn't care less about elites. It has to do with an understanding of what it is to be epistemically justified in holding an empirical belief.
 
As for the rest of the post:  Yes, there are lots of arrogant people in the world, but don't confuse arrogance with a commitment to infallability.  If your Sabermetric friend is endorsing the claim that "we have no reason to believe P therefore P is false" they are comitting a fallacy.  I prefer to interpret them as saying "you aren't warranted in insisting that the explanation for Washburn's success is that he's in a career year, so stop acting like you are". Of course, I wasn't at the dinner table.  If they did the former, then shame on them.