Silva Forces Rangers to Take Serious Look

Former Cal State Fullerton pitcher Ted Silva is starting to attract some serious attention from the Texas Rangers’ front office.

Silva, a right-hander drafted in the 21st round in 1995, won his sixth game Sunday night for double-A Tulsa, giving him 16 victories for the season, including 10 with Class A Port Charlotte, Fla.

Silva gave up four hits and one unearned run on the way to a 2-1 decision over Arkansas, his second complete-game victory at Tulsa.

Silva, in his first full season of professional baseball, is one of only two pitchers in the minor leagues this season to win as many as 16 games. The other is Blake Stein, who is 16-5 this summer for the St. Louis Cardinals’ Class A St. Petersburg team in the Florida State League.

Silva was 10-2 with Port Charlotte in the Florida State League before the Rangers moved him up to their Texas League team, giving him a combined 16-4 record for the year.

“Ted continues to pitch above expectations,” said Reid Nichols, Ranger director of player development. “He’s been a winner everywhere he’s pitched for us over the last two seasons. There were some questions when he started out about whether he had enough major league pitches, but he’s shown he has excellent control and a good slider. He’s always around the strike zone.”

Silva has given up only 12 walks in 52 innings for Tulsa. His 3.66 earned-run average also would be considerably better had it not been for one bad outing recently when he gave up six earned runs early in a loss to Shreveport, La. At Port Charlotte, Silva’s ERA was 2.86.

The year before, in a short season with Charleston, S.C., after helping Fullerton win the College World Series, Silva was 5-4 with a 3.38 ERA.

Nichols says Silva has a good shot at moving up to triple-A Oklahoma City next season.

And if he continues on his recent pace?

“We normally like for our pitchers to get at least 500 innings in the minors before we consider them for higher,” Nichols said. “But if Ted proves he’s ready sooner than that, we’re not going to hold back on giving him a look.”

Silva is the first Ranger pitcher to win as many as 16 games in the minors in a season since John Dettmer did it in 1993 at Port Charlotte, and Silva has a chance to add to that total before the regular season ends Aug. 31. The Rangers’ minor league record is 19 victories by Gerald Alexander, who did it with Port Charlotte and Oklahoma City six years ago.

The Rangers also have invited Silva to pitch in the Arizona fall instructional league beginning in September.

“We see it as a reward for him for what he’s done this summer,” Nichols said.

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Brian Loyd, the former Cal State Fullerton catcher, signed with the San Diego Padres not long after returning home from the Atlanta Olympics and is with the Padres’ Class A team in Clinton, Iowa.

Loyd, who quickly became the regular behind the plate, is batting .292 for the Lumber Kings in 24 at-bats.

Clinton is in the Midwest League along with Kane County of Illinois, where former Titan Mark Kotsay was assigned. But the two former teammates at Fullerton for three years and Team USA for two summers won’t be rivals this summer. Their teams don’t meet in the final two weeks of the regular season.

Kotsay’s professional career started last weekend with the Geneva, Ill., team. In his first 12 at-bats during a three-game series, Kotsay had two hits, one of them a double. He struck out three times.

Kotsay says he has no concerns about moving from the metal to the wooden bat.

“I used the wood in the Cape Cod League that summer after my freshman year, and I’ve hit with it quite a bit in practice at Fullerton,” he said. “It seems to me the ball goes just as far with the wood if you hit the sweet spot.”

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Former Katella High pitcher Jaret Wright, who missed more than a month of the season with a broken jaw, is back pitching for the Cleveland Indians’ Kinston, N.C., team in the Carolina League.

Wright was hit in the face with a bat when he accidentally walked into a practice swing before a Class A all-star game at Rancho Cucamonga in June. He returned to the team July 25 and picked up his first victory since the injury last week.

Wright, whose father Clyde is a former pitcher for the Angels, is 5-4 with a 2.42 ERA.

“He’s pitched in three games since he got back there and he’s doing fine,” Clyde Wright said. “They would only let him pitch three innings in his first game back, and he struck out five and didn’t give up a run. The next time he pitched five innings and struck out 10 and gave up a couple of runs. Then he pitched six innings the last time out and got the victory.

“I think some people are amazed that he got back at all this season.”