Silva is not a good pitcher

Silva is not a good pitcher. He is not as really as bad as he has shown this year but he was never as good as he was last year. Before this year he had pitched good enough to be a # 4 or 5 starter but he never really had enough “stuff” to be a good pitcher.

He is considered a groundball pitcher. Before this season he was about a 60 % groundball pitcher. He was a groundball pitcher but right on the edge of being average. This year his groundball percentage is 54%, average. For a guy who strikes out less than 3.5 batters per 9 innings that just isn’t going to cut it.

Because he does not strike out a lot of hitter and his groundball % is only average a lot of the batted balls are now fly balls. Fly balls turn into homeruns to the tune of 30 so far this year. That is about 2 homeruns per nine innings.

He is not going to win that way. Last year he won. It seems he did it with a lot of luck. His DIPS last year was a respectable 4.33 but his ERA was an amazing 3.44. He was able to do this because the defense played better behind him and a lot of the balls hit were hit at someone and turned into double plays.

It was obvious that he could not keep that up. And all the good luck/random chance he had last year has now turned against him this year.

His stats as a Twin
.310/.342/.462/.804 2004 ERA 4.21 DIPS 4.48 BIPA .303
.290/.300/.441/.741 2005 ERA 3.44 DIPS 4.33 BIPA .275
.337/.362/.559/.921 2006 ERA 6.70 DIPS 5.5 BIPA .318

This year he is pitching to the equivalent of facing Justin Morneau every at bat.