Twins keep Silva and send Garza down
The StarTribune reports in a surprising move made by the Minnesota Twins, they have decided to keep Carlos Silva who struggled throughout the year last season. The Twins sent down Matt Garza, their highly praised prospect, to AAA-Rochester Wednesday. Silva will join Johan Santana, Sidney Ponson, Boof Bonser and Ramon Ortiz in the starting rotation to kick off the start of the baseball season for 2007.
Garza's earned run average (ERA) was a 1.50 while Silva's ERA was 11.02 for spring training. The lower the number for ERA the better. It means the pitcher has given up less runs during nine innings.
Sometimes spring training's very deceiving," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "And hopefully that's the case here."
Twinsbaseball.com reports the Twins decided Garza was not ready to come up to the majors again because of inexperience and him always relying on his fastball. Garza had a tough time throwing his breaking ball over for strikes which allowed Silva to get the starting role. Club officials have indicated once Garza gets command of his other pitches than his fastball, then he will probably be called up with the team.
The team also believes Garza will receive more experience in the minors, being able to pitch every fifth day as a starter, than if he were to start in the bullpen and pitching only one or two innings not every five days. Gardenhire said the news was, of course, disappointing to Garza, but that the 23-year-old pitcher also agreed with some of the team's assessment.
http://www.startribune.com/509/story/1085809.html
http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070328&content_id=1864219&vkey=spt2007news&fext=.jsp&c_id=min