Okay, I'm Over It Now

I think there's a natural inclination to overreact when you see something take place that you knew from the start you didn't want to happen. It's like when a parent trips over toys in the hallway that he told the kid to pick up an hour earlier. You better believe that kid's gonna get it.

None of us wanted Carlos Silva. We all laughed at the beginning of the offseason when people were calling him the best free agent pitcher on the market, and we couldn't wait to find out which backwards organizations were going to throw their hats into the ring so we could all poke fun at them. Everyone knew from the start that he was going to get way too big of a contract, and all we wanted was for the Mariners to set their sights elsewhere.

Which they did. For a while the M's looked like the frontrunners for Hiroki Kuroda, right up until the moment he signed with LA. That's when, in what felt like about six minutes, they (A) were first linked to Carlos Silva, and (B) got him signed to a four-year deal.

It all happened so fast, and this being the contract that we've been warning against since October, the response was predominantly negative. The Mariners up and did the one thing we knew from the start we didn't want them to do. How were we supposed to react? It's like Bavasi was intercepting our thoughts and following all the bad ones. It really did feel like getting slapped in the face.

But you know what? Whatever. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a financially irresponsible contract, and that you could get 90-100% of Silva's production going forward from someone else for a tiny fraction of the price. Of that I don't think there's any question. But overpaying is nothing new for this team, and at the end of the day, I would so much rather pay too much money than give away too much talent. It's not like we traded Adam Jones for Bronson Arroyo (yet). You can work around bad contracts. You can't work around a lack of talent because you traded it all away. This could've been a lot worse, and while I know we're all getting sick of saying that, it's true nonetheless. Take consolation in the fact that, while Bill Bavasi does dumb things, he doesn't often do the dumbest.

I still wish this organization had a god damn clue when it comes to pitcher evaluation, though. More than I wish the Seahawks had someone capable of converting a 3rd and 1.