Seattle - Supposedly Signed Silva
Seattle Mariners - Signed P Carlos Silva to a 4-year, $44 million contract.
Christmas is the time for dreams and if I was a Mariners fan, I’d spend the next week imagining that this is a 4-year, ¥44 million contract and they really didn’t spend $11 million a year on Carlos Silva. If Silva’s worth millions, then the reported contract offers of the Twins to Santana is off by a decimal place.
Silva’s kind of a rich man’s Josh Towers, which is kind of sad. He absolutely needs pinpoint control to succeed and while he’s not going to have another season where he walks just 9 batters, he’s smart to sign with a team that plays in a stadium that will keep the homers down. Silva in Denver would be downright funny. Not really the worst signing in the world, since he was sadly one of the most valuable starting pitchers in the FA market and Nintendo’s awash in Wii-cash, but something just seems perverse about signing a player for $11 million a year and have him not even be good enough to crack the starting rotation of your primary competition the upcoming season.
2008 ZiPS Projection - Carlos Silva
————————————————————————————————-
W L G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA ERA+
————————————————————————————————-
Projection 11 13 32 30 192 228 102 26 30 85 4.78 90
2009? 10 13 30 28 172 210 95 23 29 68 4.97 86
2010? 10 12 28 27 167 203 92 21 32 62 4.96 87
2011? 9 12 27 26 157 196 91 22 28 54 5.22 82
————————————————————————————————-
Opt. (15%) 14 11 33 31 203 225 93 21 26 101 4.12 104
Pes. (15%) 6 13 25 23 144 190 95 23 31 49 5.94 72
————————————————————————————————-
Top Comps: Bill Wegman, Andy Ashby
[ADDENDUM: I make it a policy to try to avoid other site’s analysis of transactions until I get a chance to think about it, but I noticed this morning, while checking out the main Mariners sites I read (USS Mariner and Lookout Landing) that Matthew over at the latter thought of Josh Towers and before I did. While I thought of Towers independently (well, technically, ZiPS found Towers pretty high in the comps and I simply thought it apt), credit should still go to the person who thought of it first!]
Dan Szymborski
Posted: December 20, 2007 at 05:44 AM |
18 comment(s)
Login to Bookmark
Related News:
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. nymusix Posted: December 20, 2007 at 06:11 AM (#2650433)They would then have an awful amount of money tied up in some pretty unimpressive players.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main