Game Three Thoughts
Dave · April 8, 2009 at 8:57 pm · Filed Under Mariners
I only have one thought, actually – of the 98 pitches Silva threw tonight, 84 of them were “fastballs”. Nothing like predictability to go along with below average velocity. That’s a fantastic game plan.
Three more years…
Is there a good option regarding Silva?
It feels better to think of it as 2+ years…
DFA! DFA! DFA!
Subtract travel days.. days between starts.. and the offseason.. it’s just a few weeks, really.
Umm.. yeah.
Dear god.. please find some obscure clause in his contract that lightens the team plane by 300 lbs. I will worship thee.
Dump Silva and who replaces him?
I do hope Silva does well enough to create some interest so we can dump him on someone else. Until then I will take his nights off, read a book or something.
Get ready to do a lot of reading.
I gets frustrating the hole the Bavasi regime dug for Jack Z and company. Silva’s horrid contract, Washburn being on this roster when he could have been given away, the Kenji extention (okay, that was ownership in all fairness) and three straight #1 picks turned in to relievers.
Any of these things in isolation is not the end of the world but all of them together are tough to deal with.
Silva to me is the worst of them all as that contract is just not tradeable right now.
There has to be some pitcher on the staff that can start, have a 9.00 ERA, with a sub .500 record. Probably can get one cheaper than 12 million also.
If Bedard keeps pitching well, wouldn’t it just be worth it to send Bedard and Silva to the Yankees for a Yankee Stadium T-shirt?
Those are really bad ways to evaluate a pitcher.
Anyone! We have a whole organization of kids in various levels of being starters so just give them a shot or just use relievers to take his place. Who cares! Just get rid of the guy.
You leave him in, you lose.
You replace him, you have a better shot at winning. He’s that bad!
A T-Ball pitcher.
(wait for it…)
Ok, Silva did throw a lot of fastballs, but did you also notice that when he decided to throw changeups to a couple lefties, they took him deep? Both pitches to Span and Morneau were on changeups.
There’s no good pitch for Silva to go to. Of all the things to complain about with his fat ass, I’d say throwing too many fastballs is probably pretty low on the list. The location of said fastballs could be a legitimate gripe, but not pitch selection in general. That argument works with Felix, who actually has good off speed pitches, but not Silva.
Morrow? Aumont? Batista? We have plenty of questionable starters that cost us far less in terms of dollars and may even end up giving us a better chance to win with the occasional meltdown. Silva is all meltdown.
In other words, what I’m saying, is anyone on the staff can replace Silva — how can they be any worse?
Dude, that’s way too trenchant an analysis. Also, I’m pretty sure a better game plan won’t help him to be any less of a not very good pitcher
If we cut him, we still pay him and it’s not like he’s blocking somebody that we need to get into the rotation. Morrow’s not a starter (I guess), Olson, Feierabend, Vargas, and Hernandez aren’t an improvement (plus Feierabend’s hurt), and Aumont, Ramirez, and Pineda aren’t close. And let’s not forget Washburn and Bedard’ll be gone next year. Who’re we gonna put in the rotation then? Okay, if Morrow decides to rejoin the rotation, Bedard resigns, and we trade Beltre for Madison Bumgarner who immediately proves himself to be major league ready, we’ll talk, but for now, we’re actually better with him than without him. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually true.
Wait wait. Forget Bedard resigns. If we draft Strasburg. Yeah, that’s the three things we need. Morrow back in the rotation, Strasburg on the roster, and Beltre for Bumgarner who proves himself major league ready. Then we can shoot Silva out of a cannon.
Who’re we gonna put in the rotation then?
Jakubauskas looked pretty good, and he’s normally a starter. He’d be better in the rotation than Silva. There’s your answer.
Strasburg on the roster, and Beltre for Bumgarner
In a dream world, one of those things would happen. We’re not getting Strasburg, and although Brian Sabean is a fairly incompetent GM, he’s not gonna trade Madison freakin Bumgarner for half a season of Adrian Beltre. No way.
Clearly. I was just trying to come up with a situation where we’d actually have a reason to cut Silva. It could be any major league ready pitcher. Bumgarner was just the first name that popped into my mind. I hope my point was clear though. We have no reason to cut Silva unless we have five better major league ready arms. Felix, Morrow, and maybe Rowland-Smith (this one’s iffy) makes three. I don’t think we’re likely to find two more any time soon.
Don’t worry kids, Silva has been testing a new grip with the fastball to get better movement. The sinker will be sinking again shortly.
Yeah but when is Silva’s arm going to be Major League read??????????
It’s okay to throw mainly fastballs if you throw 96 plus with movement but Silva (who I am told relies on ground ball outs)doesnt and quite frankly instead of sinking it seems to fly out of the stadium!!!!
From Baker’s postgame article:
That seems uncharacteristic of Wak “keep it in the clubhouse”, though there isn’t a direct quote from him saying that. My question for Joh is, if it didn’t work the first time with Morneau, why did you think Span would be fooled the next time? Don’t you think hitters talk to one another?
In the end the pitcher throws the pitch and if he didn’t want to throw his changeup Silva could have shaken him off. Also it doesn’t strike me that the problem was that it was a changeup, but the location of those changeups.
Virtually anybody else besides Silva would be an improvement. All our minor league pitchers aren’t major league ready, which is why they aren’t there. But they have room for improvement. Silva is as good as he’s going to get, there’s no room for improvement (“upside”). So we’re better off cutting him and spending his $12 million plus $425,000 for a random AAA pitcher with possibly the same results BUT who also WILL GET BETTER.
well atleast the team almost scored enough to surmount the runs allowed and the relief did good.
OOps! Meant Major League ready.
I think I figured out the plan that Silva keeps forgetting when he gets to the mound, “Keep it out of the middle of the plate!”.
OOps! Meant Major League ready.
I think I figured out the plan that Silva keeps forgetting when he gets to the mound, “Keep it out of the middle of the plate!”.
Carlos Silva signed a contract that guaranteed him $48 million dollars. Not $12 million a year until we get sick of him. $48 million. The money is gone. It’s Carlos’s now. Cutting him doesn’t bring the money back. If cutting him would get us the rest of our $48 million back the Mariners would’ve cut him months ago and everybody in Seattle would have rejoiced. That’s not how it works. We have to give Carlos Silva another $40 million so cutting him won’t help anything. It’ll just make it so an even worse pitcher takes his spot. Sure that pitcher won’t be overpaid, but that’s totally irrelevant. If we have to pay Carlos $40 mil and we don’t have a better pitcher ready for the rotation, we should use him. Not using him would be dumb.
Argh. Now I double posted!
I dont see it as being Major League ready. I see it as a big albatross called a contract that you can only get away from by having the guy throw good enough to attract some sucker to eat some of the contract. By the time Silva does that we will all be having nightmares the night before his starts.
I havent seen anything that would make you think Jak couldnt give you five innings with less than 6 runs. By the time teams get a book on him maybe something else can be done. At least let us enjoy the first month of the season!!!!!
Silva: “I felt great with my mechanics and everything,” Silva said. “Besides those two change-ups that I threw, I wouldn’t take anything back.”
See. That was the problem there. He should’ve thrown MORE than 86% “fastballs”.
Or something.
Positive things:
1. Generally good hitting, including new guys who are doing a great job of working the count and increasing the other side’s pitch count. We never saw this last year.
2. Good starting pitching apart from one game and good relief pitching apart from one inning.
3. Improved outfield defense, plus the unmatchable Beltre.
I suspect a lot of Yankee fans are jealous of us right now.
What if we have Silva pitch lefty? I mean, it can’t be much worse than him pitching righty and it might solve our bullpen problem.
You have to take a deep breath and think about Silva. Not from Silva’s point of view, but from management. You know Mr Z and Waky are both rolling their eyes when they see Silva in the lineup. But they do have a strategy. Trading or DFA are remote possibilities, lets not pay him for doing nothing. They are using him to buy some time for younger folks so prove/iron out in the minors. We REALLY have to try to bite the bullet and be patient here. Like some have mentioned, we can turn the TV off, not go to the game or read a book when Silva pitches. I’m betting Waka wishes he could do the same thing. Think about it, as fans we have it easy, I feel more sorry for management and teammates.
If anyone is a glass half full person, Silva did get some ground balls last night, something he wasn’t doing last season.
Actually, I find this hard to believe so maybe it is wrong, but Fangraphs boxscore says 13 GB to only 4 FB.
As to a possible excuse, I sort of half expected Silva to blame Ichiro’s jersey. “It just hung there, it didn’t show us any leadership at all”.
Silva’s sub-par pitching aside, I thought the bullpen did outstanding. Both Lowe and Jakubauskas pitched really well in my opinion. Some nasty breaking balls and both have a decent fast balls, and seemed to locate quite well. I’m looking forward to seeing more from Jak.
No mention of Mark Lowe and his 7 swinging strikes on 7 sliders?
Well that’s more or less what I expected from Lowe =) Mark was pretty lights out though.
Can someone help me out here ?
It sounded like our approach at the plate in both the 8th and 9th innings was a lot less than stellar. We were only down by a run; easily doable. Was the approach actually decent? I didn’t get to actually see it on TV as I was listening to Dave on the radio. Thanks!
The first time around, John set up well outside of where Silva actually threw the pitch. Is it safe to think maybe Silva can actually hit a target? Maybe there’s Joh’s problem. Pitch selection we might criticize for. Pitch location was a bigger issue.