Yasny, I respectfully disagree. First of all when the season started he was our number 3, and you could argue with Loiaza becoming Loiaza again, he still is. Your comparison to Lowe and Mussina involves to veterans who are clearly on their downslide, and Westbrook is certainly better than Garland.
But I think there's no getting around the fact that people (me included) dislike Garland for both his performance and his personality, for lack of a better word. He doesn't convey any sense of determination, or fire, or the ability to rise to the occasion. This is an important start - this is an important inning - this is an important hitter - these are all concepts that seem outside of his grasp. He makes it very hard to root for him, hard to invest my emotion into an enterprise he seems to have no emotion for himself.
If I could turn him into Garciaparra, I do it without worrying about next year. In a couple of years Jon will be a free agent and gone anyway.
I will say he's a better pitcher than Karchner.