Due to the vagaries of geography and time zones and stuff, we easterners don’t get to hear a lot about what happens in Seattle. Oh, we get the big stories: Ichiro is good, Steve Largent has sure hands, the Denny Party has found a new place to settle -- but the little stuff often escapes our attention. Stuff like just how bad Carlos Silva is and just how much Mariners fans hate him.
How much do they hate him? The Mariners just traded for baseball’s problem child, and as of 3PM this afternoon, Seattle Times readers are 91%-9% in favor of the deal. Granted, this is not a scientific sampling, but if anything, the sorts of people who click on Internet polls should skew more in favor of the “Milton-Bradley-is-a-bum” talk radio crowd than it does towards people who analyze baseball objectively and thus might realize that Bradley has some basic value. Heck, I’d at least expect this to be a 60-40 thing.
At some point, some Cubs fans are going to try and talk themselves into believing that having Carlos Silva on the team is a good thing. Before they do, they might want to talk to some Mariners fans first, because they prefer Bradley at a ten-to-one clip.