Four - eight - zero - zero - zero - zero - zero - zero. That's size zeros. Six. For this:

A pitcher who just a year ago was detrimental to his team is now making 12 million annually. In fairness to Silva he did allow more line drives than before in 2006, but this signing is inexcusable for me - pitchers like Ted Lilly, Javier Vazquez, and Gil Meche are making - Silva isn't nearly as good as that trio.

Apparently this won't effect the Mariners' pursuit of Erik Bedard, but I sincerely hope Bill Bavasi doesn't think that signing Carlos Silva would give him enough leverage to not give up a king's ransom for the Orioles' left-handed ace.

As for the pitchers in Seattle, their rotation looks something like: Felix Hernandez, Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, Carlos Silva, and the "winner" of Horacio Ramirez, Cha Seung Baek, and R.A. Dickey. It's just an okay rotation, and the five spot looks atrocious, but isn't the biggest problem with the Mariners the fact that they have two huge underachievers on their roster all ready? Why add another huge salary to a player who doesn't put you over the top and is just as overpaid as your current issues?

Let's just assume that Horacio wins that fifth spot, the rotation could make a combined 34.5 million next year and with their three top pitchers having ERA+ within the 100-110 range the price tags clearly don't match the production. I'm not sure if it's possible to do so in the game with the current crazy market, but the Mariners are spending nearly double the Marlins on their rotation alone, and it's essentially league average! That's nuts.

On behalf of agents and pitchers everywhere: thank you Bill Bavasi, thank you a ton for making the demand on starting pitching even greater. All that's left for him to do is go out and give a similar contract to Kyle Lohse or Kris Benson, that or sign Sidney Ponson.