respectable starters still available: Jarrod Washburn, Jon Garland, Jason Marquis, Joel Pineiro and Vicente Padilla

Ewwww...

That is one generous definition of "respectable". I had a good-hearted shouting match via Twitter with a baseball writer (who I can not remember now?) around the trade deadline about how Washburn wasn't going to help Detroit do a damn thing. Washburn is a pile of junk at this point.

2007-9:

Marquis 574 IP, 105 ERA+
Garland 609 IP, 104 ERA+
Washburn 523 IP, 102 ERA+
Padilla 438 IP, 91 ERA+
Pineiro 460 IP, 101 ERA+

4 of those 5 easily meet the definition of respectable starter. Padilla, not so much.

The question is how much are you willing to pay for past durability and decent performance from pitchers likely entering their decline years. It's not an easy question to answer.

I've made a similar point once today but there are 67 pitchers with 450+ IP from 2007-9, so just over 2 per team. The median ERA+ in that group is 110. So (1) if those 4 haven't been "respectable", you might as well retire the word and (2) if they remain durable, they are quite likely to remain at least useful.

Those 4 guys have ERA+ better than Duke, Carmona, Maholm, Zito, Jackson, Santana, Millwood, Blanton. Their ERA+ is as good as Lohse, Penny, Wolf, Arroyo, Pettitte and (nearly) Harang. Over the last 3 seasons, combining peformance and durability, they've been comfortably in the top 60-75 starters in baseball. In 2009, by ERA+ for guys with 150+ IP, they ranked 32nd (Pineiro), 35th (Washburn), 40th (Marquis), 42nd (Garland). [Padilla, who doesn't belong in this group, didn't quite reach 150 IP but would have ranked 64th on this list.]

You may not like it, they may not have achieved it in an aesthetically or sabermetrically pleasing manner, but Washburn, Marquis and Garland have been good, healthy pitchers for a long time now. That could change any day now of course. But, unless you've got some good ML-ready prospects, the other options are guys who haven't been good, healthy pitchers even recently. You might do better on the $/WAR scale with the latter group but there's very little doubt you'll do better on the WAR scale (and the real wins scale) with the former.