PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) -Carlos Silva’s new manager wanted to give his $48 million pitcher a hug.
Not because he missed him over the winter – Don Wakamatsu wasn’t even in Seattle with the burly right-hander last season.
“I hugged him just to see if I could put my arms around him,” Wakamatsu said, laughing.
Last year it may have taken two men with the wingspans of hawks to do that.
Silva devoured large, late dinners while reaching 285 pounds. Everything else plummeted.
He went 4-15 with a career-worst 6.46 ERA in his first season with the Mariners. He was 1-15 in his final 23 starts. His usually jolly nature turned jaded. He complained teammates weren’t pulling their own, um, weight. His own added pounds gave him problems with his back.
“I don’t feel I did anything for this team,” he said.
5 pounds.
“A lot of changes. A whole different life. It feels really good,” Silva said proudly.
He was sitting at his locker after clowning with and then beating ace Felix Hernandez, a fellow, smaller Venezuelan, in two 300-yard shuttle conditioning runs.
“I think you will start to see the difference,” he said.
The Mariners already do.
“It looks like someone cut him in half,” Wakamatsu said, calling Silva’s appearance his best surprise in his first few days as a major league manager.
Silva knew he had disappointed the Mariners, their miserable fans and himself last season. One of the 2008 offseason’s bigger free-agent pitcher signings became one of many to blame for Seattle becoming the first team with a $100 million payroll to lose 100 games.
“The expectations were so high,” he said in his accented English. “For me, I didn’t show it to my teammates, to the fans.
“This year, it’s time. … I have to. But the thing I can tell you know is,” he said, pointing a finger for emphasis, “I expect to do well.”
Silva called this winter the most intense he’s had since he broke into the majors with Philadelphia seven years and 59 wins ago.
He set a goal in October to be at 250 pounds when he arrived at spring training for the second season of his four-year deal with Seattle.
In the first week of this “new life,” he lost five pounds.
be easy, no problem,” Silva told himself.
The next week he lost only two pounds. Then none. The week after that, he gained back two pounds. He was discouraged. Rafael Colon, one of the Mariners’ Spanish-speaking mental-skills coaches, encouraged him to keep working, that change would not come overnight.
Then Silva’s wife, Maria, who had just had their second child in September, stepped in. She cooked for him, trimmed fat from all meats. She made sure he was in bed by 9:30 for his 7 a.m. workouts, because, as his nutritionist emphasized, “You burn a lot of fat when you sleep.”
Maria also joined her husband for yoga workouts three times per week. The sessions were like in-house torture to the inflexible Silva.
“I’m telling you, man, that’s the worst thing I ever did in my life,” he said, not laughing. “I was so stiff. My God, it was so painful.
“Because I was pretty strong, I thought, ‘Yoga, big deal. I can do that.’ I couldn’t hold the positions. My body wouldn’t twist. After the first 10 minutes I told my wife, ‘I can’t do this any more!”’
The 6-foot-4 Silva was so fearful of the yoga, he studied the security cameras that were trained on his driveway in nervous anticipation just before his instructor was due to arrive at his house.
“As soon as I would see her on the cameras, my body would be in pain,” Silva said.
or Richard Simmons, but at least no one will mistake him for the Michelin Man anymore.
Not his wife, his yoga instructor, his nutritionist – nor another young woman who made Silva shine this winter: daughter Gabriella, now five months old.
“She’s so great. Every time she looks at me, she smiles,” Silva said, gushing and spreading his fingers from his slimmed-down face to imitate his daughter’s radiance.
“Oh, it’s so great.”
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