Carlos Silva

Silva started six early season games last year, spent the next four months "rehabbing" an injured shoulder and then pitched 1.2 innings of relief in two September games. For that, he pocketed $11 million. Talk about sweet gigs. He was just as bad last season (worse even) as the previous year, and Mariners fans wouldn't have cried if another mystery ailment kept him away from the mound this season. Instead, GM Jack Zduriencik somehow found a team to take an albatross of a contract (Silva's deal had $23 million remaining) and got value in return in Milton Bradley. A change of scenery can't but help Silva after his terrible performance in Seattle, but he may sit at the end of the bullpen as the Cubs ride out his contract.

Silva signed a huge free-agent contract last season with the Mariners and was a huge bust. But that shouldn't have been a surprise. A pitcher with a career 3.80 K/9 has absolutely no margin for error. Silva himself summed it up precisely last season: "[W]hen the other team knows you're going to be around the plate, if you don't make your pitches and you don't hit your spots, you're going to get hit hard. And that's what's been happening to me. So, I have to hit my corners. When I don't hit them, I'm going to be in trouble because they know I'm going to throw strikes." That in a nutshell is why Silva can't be relied upon from start to start. If his sinker isn't working and he's not hitting the corners, he has no chance. He gave up 12.5 H/9 last season and despite being a sinkerball pitcher had a mere 1.28 G/F. Minor injuries (back, tendinitis) didn't help his cause. Unfortunately for the Mariners, Silva has three years and $36 million remaining on his contract, which likely will secure his place in the rotation again this season despite the obvious.

Silva rebounded from a horrible 2006 season and re-established himself as a steady mid-rotation starter. Silva strikes out very few batters (his K/9 last year was 3.97, the lowest mark of any A.L. starter) and instead relies on control and inducing ground balls with a sinker. The key to his turnaround was going from 38 home runs allowed in 2006 (the most in baseball) to just 20 last season. Despite his bounceback year, he's still not a great fantasy option since he needs almost everything to be perfect to overcome his lack of strikeouts. If he isn't able to get the sinker working and hit the corners, his numbers could explode along the lines of his 2006 season. At least the move to Safeco Field will help.

Silva enters 2007 with a spot in the Minnesota rotation despite the worst season of his career, allowing a league-high 38 home runs. He has never been a great strikeout pitcher but relied on outstanding control and a strong sinker to induce ground balls. In 2005, he walked just nine batters in 188.1 innings, the seventh-best ratio in baseball history. Whether it was because his sinker wasn't working or batters finally realized they would get pitches to hit, Silva struggled to keep the ball in the park. One sign of hope is that he did improve in the second half of the season with a 4.88 ERA. Still, don't count on him to hold his spot in the rotation. His control needs to be almost perfect for success and there are plenty of good young arms in the organization waiting to take his place.

Silva will be the No. 3 starter for the Twins after a season in which he displayed some of the greatest control in major league history. Silva walked only nine batters in 188 1/3 innings - the seventh-best ratio in baseball history. Noted baseball analyst Bill James once wrote that a statistical oddity may in fact show some sort of skill, and this may be the case with Silva as in the second half of the season opposing hitters knew they were only going to see strikes and still couldn't do much with the ball. Silva will need to maintain this outstanding control because he doesn't strike out enough batters and gives up a few too many home runs, which limits his upside. Still, he was showing better control before last year's historic success, so he should be able to pitch enough quality innings to win 10+ games again. Silva did pitch all last season with a torn meniscus in his right knee and had offseason surgery. While it didn't impact him last season, his recovery is still something to keep tabs on this spring.

Silva won 14 games in his first season as a starter but had some secondary stats that will may make it hard for him to repeat that success. Silva allowed a .310 batting average to opponents and struck out just 3.4 batters per nine innings. The key to Silva's improvement was that he walked batters at nearly one third the rate as 2003. He'll need to maintain that kind of control to remain as one of the top three starters for the Twins. If so, he should win 10-plus games again in the weak AL central.

If Silva's season encompassed the first and last months of the season, it would have been a great season for the middle reliever. But sandwiched in between the two months were some atrocious months including a six-game suspension. Traded to the Twins, he'll have a chance to carve out an important role in a changing bullpen.

When the Phillies bullpen was exploding in the first half of 2002, Silva managed to give Larry Bowa consistency. A couple of bad outings skewed his ERA to 3.21, but he was effective by and large and has earned the right-handed setup role. He could get an opportunity to compete for a starting job in the spring, but a return to the bullpen is more likely.