Milton Bradley Traded To Mariners For Carlos Silva

[davearm2]

Getting back on topic here, I have a question for some of the stat guys out there. I just looked at Silva FIP and xFIP from 2008 and they were 4.63 and 4.64. While in 2007 his FIP was 4.24 and XFIP was 4.57. But his era was 6.46 era in 08 compared to 4.19 in 2007. So my question is how much of Silva struggles in 08 had to do with some bad luck? And did he really pitch that much worse in 08 then in 07? Does anyone think that Silva can be a serviceable 5th starter or good long guy and eat some innings? Especially coming over to the NL. Jason Marquis for example had higher FIP and xFIP in 07-08. So maybe Silva can give us Marquis like numbers out of the 5th spot if healthy.

IMO the two critical considerations with Silva are the health of his shoulder and his ability to throw his sinker effectively.

 

The guy's demonstrated an ability to be a useful backend starter -- based on his FIP numbers, he's been roughly league average in 4 of his 5 full seasons starting (4.36 4.18 5.76 4.24 4.63). Plus, that's been in the AL, so a move to the NL should theoretically help him.

 

Now there's definitely a strong possibility that Silva is a complete washout with the Cubs, and his upside is limited, but I think you're right that folks here have been too quick to write him off as completely worthless junk.

[cubsfan26]

However, his walk rate suffered last year, albeit in a small sample size.

 

Yeah I'm not even paying attention to his numbers of last season. Since it was such a small sample size, and he was most likely pitching hurt which caused the increase in walks.

 

IMO the two critical considerations with Silva are the health of his shoulder and his ability to throw his sinker effectively.

 

Yeah I'm starting to have some concerns about his health. I heard Hendry get asked about his shoulder. But according to Hendry it wasn't really that bad, and hinted the Mariners shut down Silva more because he was struggling then his shoulder being really bad. But I have read other reports that make it sound like his shoulder could be a cause for concern.

 

The guy's demonstrated an ability to be a useful backend starter -- based on his FIP numbers, he's been roughly league average in 4 of his 5 full seasons starting (4.36 4.18 5.76 4.24 4.63). Plus, that's been in the AL, so a move to the NL should theoretically help him.

 

Exactly it seems to me that this guy can be a serviceable back of the rotation starter. He's bascially being called terrible because of his 08 season, and his FIP and xFIP show he wasn't that bad. When I think of Silva in the NL I think of a Jason Marquis type pitcher. Silva will probably get hit a little more, but he won't walk nearly the amount of batters Marquis does.

 

Now there's definitely a strong possibility that Silva is a complete washout with the Cubs, and his upside is limited, but I think you're right that folks here have been too quick to write him off as completely worthless junk.

 

Yeah like usual people on here overreacted about something. I agree that Silva could either suck or be hurt most of his time here. But the way I look at it is, that if the Cubs were gonna trade Bradley they were gonna have to eat 15m or so anyways. Like it or not but Bradley burned too many bridges and coming back wasn't a option. So in any deal we made we were going to get a worse player then Bradley in return, and probably had to eat most of Bradley money. At least with this trade there's a chance Silva can give us something. While if we did the Burrell trade, we wouldn't have saved the money we did and would have to pay almost all Bradley salary in 2011. Because we would also have to dump Burrell on someone else and eat most of his salary for 2010 as well.

[Guancous]

Sports Illustrated has a list of the ten worst MLB contracts. The Cubs have two of the top (bottom?) four. The Giants are the only other team on the list twice.

 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/sky_andrecheck/12/22/bad.contracts/index.html

 

2. Soriano

4. Silva

10. Bradley

[fromthestretch]

Yeah like usual people on here overreacted about something.

 

There's a difference between overreacting and being very disappointed in what the Cubs did. They traded a player who has the ability to be productive for a guy who is one of the most hittable pitchers in the history of the game. And this was basically done for the primary purpose of clubhouse chemistry. There's plenty of reason for people to be unhappy with this trade. The fact that you disagree does not make it an overreaction.