Seattle Mariners In Negotiations With Mediocrity

The goal of being a general manager of a major league baseball team is to improve your squad within your payroll, while always keeping an eye on your future prospects for success as well as the current context of league competition.  Or something like that.

I lead with this largely because of recent rumor that the Seattle Mariners are in serious discussions with Carlos Silva and the clan of Silva representatives who are giggling in the corners of their offices at the thin market for pitching and how it will make them all rich this year.  The thought is the M's have extended an offer of "at least" 4 years, $44 million dollars.

That, if true, is unequivocally a complete and utter disaster.  I beg you Bill Bavasi, I implore you to reconsider.

Carlos Silva is a #5 starter on a good team.  The Mariners have pretty terrible pitching and he would would even be a back-end option for them - likely their #4.  His career stats feature a .299 BAA and 4.31 ERA, and he's just one year removed from a season where he went 11-15 with a 5.94 ERA, 1.54 WHIP and allowed opponents to hit .324 off of him.  If your minor league system can't find an arm to perform at least a little better than that, you're a sorry, sorry organization.

But for $44 million dollars and tying our hands when there are some real free agents available next year, we get a right handed version of Jarrod Washburn.  We will have a staff of slightly worse-than-average starters, with one possible exception in King Felix.

This wouldn't make the Mariners contenders in '08 unless somehow it is part of a grand plan to acquire Erik Bedard without losing Adam Jones and Brandon Morrow, find a real second baseman, find a way to platoon Raul Ibanez and get him out of left field, and sign some kind of deal with the devil that your hitters can actually think about working on their OBP.  If so - I can't wait for '08.  

But I have this sinking feeling that Carlos Silva is going to be their big acquisition of the offseason - just slightly higher profile than picking up R.A. Dickey in the Rule 5 draft.  

Just slightly though.