Carlos Silva Fighting to make Cubs Rotation

Gordon Wittenmyer at the Chicago Sun-Times writes today about Carlos Silva’s confidence that he’ll be in the Cubs starting rotation come April. As noted in the article, Silva had a great start to the season, going 9-2 with a 2.96 ERA through 16 starts. However, he fell apart after that, finishing with a 10-6 record and a 4.22 ERA on the season.

Here’s a quick look at Silva’s numbers through those first 16 starts, and what happened in the brief set of starts that followed: Carlos Silva

	P	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
4/1/2010 - 7/6/2010	1468	.242	.280	.372	.292
7/11/2010 - 9/30/2010	273	.460	.507	.683	.516

	BB%	K%	Contact%	LD%	BABIP
4/1/2010 - 7/6/2010	3.9%	17.2%	82.4%	14.4%	.269
7/11/2010 - 9/30/2010	11.0%	13.7%	86.0%	27.7%	.291

Silva battled a number of injuries last year, not to mention an irregular heartbeat discovered during a game with the Colorado Rockies in early August. The 31-year old veteran has a career ERA+ of 93, with his best season in 2005 with a 130 ERA+. The Cubs can’t rely on Silva duplicating his first half of 2010. However, should he stay healthy, he still might be a decent back of the rotation starter in 2011.