I wouldn't be surprised to see him outperform that in front of Seattle's defense, which is supposed to be quite good. That said, it's still not a good signing.

Seattle's defense was pretty bad last season. Adam Jones should help, but Ibanez and Sexson are awful and Vidro is on the team as well.

You know if Batista, Washburn and Silva all hit their ZiPS pessimistic projection or say 35th PECOTA percentile the Mariners could be really, really bad.

They would then have an awful amount of money tied up in some pretty unimpressive players.

The Mariners are probably doing this on the assumption that Carlos Silva will be enough better than the garbage that they had at the back of their rotation last season that he'll help propel them to the playoffs. That evaluation of his skills may be generous, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. The problem that they're going to encounter is that he improves them from an 80 win team to an 82 win team, not an 88 win to a 90 win team.

Seattle's defense was pretty bad last season. Adam Jones should help, but Ibanez and Sexson are awful and Vidro is on the team as well.

I don't think this is correct. "Vidro is on the team as well" is an indictment of Bill Bavasi's idea of what a DH is, but Vidro played just 22 games in the field last season and doesn't figure to play any more than that next year. Yuni Betancourt and Adrian Beltre are both defensive stars, and though his statistics seem to be all over the place, Ichiro would seem to be, as well. Sexon isn't much of a 1B, and Ibanez isn't anything special in LF, but when your defensive holes are at the least important positions on the field and you have three Gold Glove-caliber guys at much more important position, I think you're doing fine.

Yuni was evidently below average defensively last year. Leaving a defensive hole at SS, large gaping wounds at 1B and LF, averagish players in RF, 2B, C, and defensive strengths at 3B and CF. The analyses I've seen suggest that defense was a substantial portion of the M's pitchers' problem last year - right up there with "lack of talent" and "team-wide obsession with establishing the fastball down the middle of the plate"

Yuni was evidently below average defensively last year.

Okay, looking up readily-available stats -- which always need to be tempered with scouting reports and/or a small amount of personal observation, in my opinion -- Yuni was -2.7 runs by PMR and -3 according to UZR. So play-by-play metrics seem to rate him as slightly below average, less than half a win. Given that, according to Dewan's numbers, he also led the league in "good plays", I'd say he's more than likely highly talented but still learning. Seattle's DER wasn't good. So maybe I should revise my assertion -- I think it's possible that the Mariners' D won't be that bad next year.

The biggest problem with Seattle's defense last year was Ibanez in Safeco's cavernous left field. Saying Ibanez 'isn't anything special' is a vast overstatement of his abilities; he's neck and neck with Manny for being the worst defensive LF in the AL (and since I think part of Manny's problem is that metrics don't handle the Green Monster properly at all, I suspect that Ibanez is worse, possibly significantly so). Since Bavasi appears determined to stick his hand in that wood chipper again, at least Silva's sinker won't care. But Silva's long fly ball problem won't be helped by having a dessicated corpse out there in left.

And then there's the 'he's not actually that good and he's signed forever for a lot of money' problem, and that's one that won't be solved by Betancourt doing a better job of turning defensive talent into defensive skill. Bavasi seems to think that his job is to turn the Mariners into Baltimore West.

Why would we expect Silva to perform better in front of Seattle's defense? Wasn't Minnesota's defense pretty good?

Why would we expect Silva to perform better in front of Seattle's defense? Wasn't Minnesota's defense pretty good?

They were certainly no worse than Seattle's. I think perhaps it is more of an expected stadium effect than team defense effect...larger dimensions and (maybe) slower grass = potential success. Intuitively, I'd say that he might get a bigger bounce from the style/level of competition out west than the defense. I just don't think any of the AL West teams seem that prone to take advantage of his weaknesses. Pitching in Texas might be a problem (and checking that now...his career splits agree), but the rest of the AL West teams & stadia seem like he'll have a slight advantage. That might not necessarily be to Silva's credit, but it could make this a wiser signing if true.

I'm sure that ZiPs doesn't take level of competition into effect...it assumes average opponents, right?

Worth noting, apparently Silva has been working on and using a third (or fourth if you count his show-me slider as a pitch) pitch, a splitfinger. According to people in Minnesota, he started working it into his gametime arsenal around July or so. There is obvious small sample size caveats here, but Silva's performance against LHB after the break were substantially better. If that mini-trend holds, that would portend well for Silva in the future.

As for the projections, I hope they're bearish. I do think his homerun total will be lower than predicted and his ERA+ closer to, if not over, 100 for '08 at least.

Cot's is reporting it at 4 years/$48M (2008-11), plus 2012 mutual option.

I wouldn't give Silva that deal if I were a GM, but I think ZiPS is overly pessimistic here. The dude has posted 112, 129, 79, and 103 ERA+ figures the last 4 seasons, and he's entering his age-29 season. Worst case, I think he will alternate between the mean and optimistic projections over the contract, with a chance at a pessimistic year over the life of the deal.

Does Minnisota geta pick from this?

good thing KC didn't get Silva

They should put that money into expanding Wii manufacturing lines...

Each Wii costs $160 to make.

Assuming a ~$275 average price, that means the $44M signed to Silva could make 275,000 Wiis.

With a $115 profit, that means Nintendo could have turned that $44M into $75.62M.

I like the idea of the comparison, but the link says that the profit per Wii is $40. This makes sense, as there are middlemen and retailers to pay, too.

I think it was USS Mariner that said that $11 mil/yr may look expensive, but given the trends in starters' salaries, it probably won't look bad in a year or so if he stays healthy.

It looks really bad.

Seattle fans won't thank you for bumping this one. Why not bump the Bedard trade while you're at it?