M’s Silva blasts position players

SEATTLE – One of the biggest among a truckload of criticisms of the Mariners this season – from within and the outside – is that the players are too indifferent.

They don’t show emotion. They aren’t bothered by being the worst team in the American League, wandering through another lost season that began so hopefully with expectations of a first playoff appearance since 2001.

Carlos Silva isn’t “they.”

Seattle’s failing right-hander went off on his position players publicly for at least the third time this season following his team’s latest loss, 5-3 Friday night to the A.L. East-leading Tampa Bay Rays. The last-place Mariners dropped to 26 games under .500 and 271/2 games out of first place in the A.L. West.

“We have to play as a team and we have to win as a team,” Silva said after allowing eight hits and five runs – four earned – in six-plus innings to fall to 4-13. The man for whom Seattle paid $48 million as a free agent last winter has won just once since April 17.

That’s a lot of time to stew.

“I don’t care if we are 40 games behind, we should play better than this,” he said, speaking with controlled, almost muted anger with fellow pitchers Jarrod Washburn and Felix Hernandez watching nearby. “I can talk about the starting rotation – every time we cross the line we want to do our best – our best – no matter how many games we are behind.

“Maybe half of the team don’t have that mentality. Their only thing is to finish strong (individually) and put up numbers. That’s great, but that affects us, you know? As a team, that doesn’t work out.

“You never want to be in this position, especially for us as pitchers.”

As in the past, Silva did not name names. He didn’t have to Friday.

Shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt threw a would-be groundout 10 feet over first base and into a camera well. That scored two runs – half of Tampa Bay’s total in the decisive third inning.

Silva said he is not confronting teammates in the clubhouse, as he sometimes did in his years with the Minnesota Twins, because he doesn’t want it to look like he can’t handle his own tough times.

“If I go there and be hard on somebody, I’m going to look bad,” he said. “I’m going to look bad because people are going to say, ‘He cannot take it when bad moments come.’ ”

Saturday manger Jim Riggleman voiced his displeasure with the rotund right-hander.

“He shouldn’t have said it to the writers,” Riggleman said. “He should have said it to me, he should have said it to the teammate he’s directing it at. I’m going to talk to him and a couple other guys. He said the starting pitchers are focused but some other people aren’t. That’s ridiculous.”

Riggleman said the insinuation that the Mariners are selfish and don’t do the little things that are important to an offense isn’t true.

“We do the little things,” he said. “It’s the big things. We’re not hitting good enough and we’re not pitching good enough. If somebody wants to hide behind, ‘Oh, we made a baserunning mistake,’ or ‘We didn’t move the runner over,’ or use the word ‘selfish,’ you can try to act like that’s the problem right there. That will make up those 30 games.

“But you’ve got to hit better and pitch better.”