Baseball Prospectus

MLB Statistics

Statistics for All Levels

Plate Discipline

Comparable Players (Similarity Index )

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2011		To some extent, all Silva had to do was deliver a better-seeming season than Milton Bradley, but the combination of Bradley's latest meltdown (performance-wise, for a change) and Silva's rattling off 13 quality starts in his first 16 turns made Hendry's off-season exchange of disappointments seem inspired. Things fell apart fast after that, though, as the beefy Silva got bombed while struggling with calf problems in July. Then he came out of his start on August 1 unable to catch his breath; he ended up needing "minor" surgery to correct heart arrhythmia. In September, he returned to make a single start before being shut down with elbow tendinitis. Before this litany of new setbacks, the finesse righty was pitching as if the years since his Twins heyday hadn't happened, firing strikes with his slow heat/slider mix en route to setting a career-high strikeout rate. Given the breadth of concerns that cropped up, it will be hard to count on him, but he has already rewarded the faith that there was still something there.
2010		The four-year, $48 million contract given to Carlos Silva, exemplar of pitch-to-contactism, before the 2008 season seemed questionable at the time, and proved to be a disaster. A poor performance in 2008 was followed by a shoulder injury in May of 2009. Silva returned from injury in September and got in a couple of relief appearances before the season was over. Zduriencik made Silva the poison pill the Cubs had to swallow to be rid of Milton Bradley, repurposing Bavasi's wasteful commitment to Silva (plus $9 million to help pay him with of the $25 million already owed to him through 2011). The expectations for him in Wrigleyville are appropriately low, but perhaps pitching in the weaker league might help him survive as the utility pitcher who either slots into the rotation because of injury, or soaks up middle-innings assignments, all for the kind of money Warren Brusstar could only enjoy in his wildest dreams of avarice.
2009		Silva did nothing to dispel the perception that former general manager Bill Bavasi overpaid for Silva on the free agent market. At his best, Silva is a fourth/fifth starter who doesn't walk or strike out anyone and lives by getting batters to hit the ball on the ground, or would if his ground ball rate wasn't unexceptional. Bavasi is gone, but this gift will keep on taking from the Mariners through 2011, after which they can pay him another $2 million to buy him out of his 2012 option. A signing like this one had so little chance of succeeding that if the Mariners franchise were a brand new car, Bavasi's signing of Silva was tantamount to the GM taking that car up to top speed and driving it into a wall. The real question isn't why he did it, but who was the bright guy that gave him the keys?
2008		When a pitcher who isn't the best in baseball gives up a few more homers, he becomes an unmitigated disaster. That was Silva in 2006, when he lost command of his sinking fastball, allowing fly balls and walks at the highest rates of his Twins career. He pitched better in last year, but we're still talking about someone who rides the knife edge of survival. His decision to sign with the Mariners, who by home park, defensive personnel, and schedule routinely provide the safest route for pitchers of any team in the AL, is either notably self-aware or blindly lucky. In either case, he's not a good bet to survive the four years of his contract.
2007		The weak link in the Twins rotation, Silva`s game has always revolved around throwing a lot of strikes (in 2005 he walked 0.43 batter per nine innings, the lowest rate in modern history) and hoping nothing gets hit too hard. Last year those hopes were frustrated. Despite great control, Silva doesn`t have the kind of extreme ground-ball tendencies necessary to survive striking out so few batters. The Twins picked up his option for 2007, but that`s just because, with Liriano hurt and Radke retired, they had to ensure the requisite number of warm bodies for the rotation. After logging only 11 quality starts (1 blown) in 31 attempts last year, he`ll be on a very short leash this year.
2005		Silva's success in the rotation is a tribute to Twins scouting for having given it a try, because during '04, he gave them a solid #3 starter, which was the sort of thing their division rivals lacked. However, his Peripheral ERAs weren't great either of the last two years, in or out of a big league rotation, which contributes to PECOTA's pessimism about his ability to sustain last year's success. When you're counting on your defense to get 90% of the outs made while you're on the mound, you'll end up taking a lot of lumps for it.
2004		According to the BP reliever ratings, Silva was the worst pitcher in baseball last year at handling inherited runners. He let 19 of 31 runners in, costing the Phillies 10 extra runs that wound up on somebody else's ERA. For some strange reason he was anointed with the "closer in waiting" tag, despite a strikeout rate that is well below league average. Billy Wagner's acquisition certainly made that a dead letter, and shortly thereafter he was dealt to the Twins ... who, coincidentally enough, have a closer vacancy.
2003		With Silva, Larry Bowa took a page from Earl Weaver’s methods—this being one of the few times you’ll ever see those two managers mentioned in the same sentence with any congruence. Silva was a hard-throwing starter in the Phillies’ minor league system that Bowa put in his bullpen as a long reliever for the year, with the thought of eventually returning him to the rotation. Silva’s control remained excellent, and he significantly cut down on his home runs allowed, two needed improvements if he hopes to survive with a low strikeout rate. Unless he develops a good strikeout pitch Silva’s likely to be a useful spare part for a few years but not much else.
2002		The knock on Silva has always been that he doesn’t get the strikeouts a pitcher with his fastball should get, largely because his off-speed stuff isn’t very good. He’s also somewhat homer-prone. Silva induces ground balls and has excellent control, so he keeps moving up the ladder. He’ll likely hit the wall in Triple-A, at which point he’ll end up in the relief role for which his stuff is best suited. If he keeps the ball down more consistently, he’ll be decent.

BP Articles

BP Chats

BP Roundtables

PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, Carlos Silva threw 6,243 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2007 and 2010, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2010, he relied primarily on his Sinker (91mph) and Change (82mph), also mixing in a Slider (80mph). He also rarely threw a Fourseam Fastball (91mph).