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Silva and (Fool's) Gold

Yes, we are only half way into Spring Training, but I just can no longer bite my tongue upon hearing the empty platitudes emanating from the Twins with regard to Carlos Silva's latest sortie to the mound.  I'm sorry, but this is the guy that has already "earned" a spot in the rotation?  I am incredulous. I lack any credule.

Everyone mouths such nice and optimistic words, but, to my all too sensitive ear, they sound like precisely the same words that were spoken all last year, a year Silva spent clambering to improve to merely within eyeshot of league average from the cavernous depths of unwatchably disastrous.

Gardenhire, Anderson, Mauer et al. all remark on how his sinker is now sinking and he is breaking bats and getting groundballs, as with 8 of his outs yesterday.  That's fabulous, were it not for the 5 hits, 2 walks, and 3 runs he gave up on all the other non-sinking pitches he threw in his 4 innings.

I do not give a good god damn if Silva throws some great sinkers and breaks bats and gets all his outs from groundballs if a third of the batters he faces hit doubles (4 of them yesterday) off of waist high meatballs he routinely intersperses with those great sinkers.  The epitome of a bad major league pitcher is one who regularly throws bad pitches that get whacked by those awfully talented major league hitters.

So far this spring Silva's sinker appears to me, just as it did last summer, to be fool's gold: It appears beautiful and shiny and full of the promise of riches; yet it turns out to be nothing of any real value because it does not produce wins.

Silva simply has not earned a starting rotation spot yet. He has shown no consistency, and no sign that he can avoid big innings.  I do not see the good Carlos Silva so far this spring.  I see last year's Carlos Silva, who throws some good sinkers but still gives up lots runs and loses more then he wins.  That Carlos Silva is not a pitcher anyone should want in their starting rotation (except maybe the Washington Nationals - poor buggers).

I say enough stroking of Silva's fragile ego.  Either he really earns a starting job by throwing his sinker consistently and well and cuts out the big innings, or he is pushed aside for Slowey or Perkins, who are each having an impressive spring.  What do you think?