Silverio awaits his big shot
Incaviglia says he can’t understand why teams won’t sign third baseman
Tri-city Valleycats third baseman Juan Silverio never spent a day in Major League Baseball, which is a mystery to Tri-city manager Pete Incaviglia.
“The guy should have played in the big leagues for 10 years,” said Incaviglia, who spent a dozen seasons in the majors. “He’s that good. It’s not hard to watch that guy every day and go, ‘Wow, this guy’s a really good baseball player.’ ”
Silverio is batting .327 with six homers and 16 RBIS for the Valleycats, who were leading Equipe Quebec 2-0 in the top of the second inning when their game was suspended by rain on Saturday at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
The contest will be resumed at 3:30 p.m. Sunday as the first game of a single-admission doubleheader.
The start of the second game has been moved from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and will be shortened to seven innings, followed by fireworks.
Before Saturday’s game was halted, Silverio singled to left and scored on Brad Zunica’s 440-foot homer to right field in the first inning.
Silverio, 30, hasn’t played in affiliated baseball since 2014, when he split time between Double-a and Triple-a for the Cincinnati Reds. He batted .265 that year with 11
homers and 26 RBIS in 110 games. He played a total of seven seasons in the affiliated minors in the White Sox and Reds organizations.
He signed with the White Sox as a 17-year-old out of the Dominican Republic in 2008.
“I was working hard all the time,” Silverio said in Spanish through Valleycats shortstop Nelson Molina, who interpreted. “I put everything into it. It was probably destiny that doesn’t want me to be in the big leagues. It wasn’t meant to be. I can say that probably the injuries I had stopped me a little bit, but I did everything I could to make it.”
Not that Silverio has abandoned any hope of making it to “The Show.”
“My goal is to make it to the big leagues,” he said. “I understand how baseball is going right now. It’s getting hard. They’re looking for young people, but I’ll be really grateful if I get a chance to go to affiliated baseball. If it’s not affiliated baseball, I’m hoping to go play in Japan, Korea, Mexico and other leagues. I’m open to playing baseball. That’s what I love and where baseball is, I’ll be there.”
The past several years, that place has been at the side of Incaviglia, who has managed Silverio on independent teams in Laredo and Sugar Land, Texas, and now Troy.
Incaviglia likes the example Silverio sets by being early to the ballpark and giving younger players instruction.
“I’m always open for Pete because Pete’s the first one that believed in me after I went out of affiliated baseball,” Silverio said. “I’m always by his hand.
I’m really grateful for the commitment we’ve built between us.”
Incaviglia has tried to reward Silverio’s performance and loyalty by getting him back to affiliated ball. But even with all his contacts, Incaviglia has found major league organizations strangely reluctant to sign Silverio.
“I’ve been trying to get Juan signed for six years,” he said. “I keep pushing him on everybody and for some reason he doesn’t get signed. I have no idea why. It is weird. There’s nothing wrong in his background or intangibles. Maybe it’s his age. I have no idea. The longer I’m in this game, the dumber I get.”
If an MLB team doesn’t want him, the Valleycats will gladly take the production they keep getting from Silverio, who has helped them rebound from a 4-16 start to win eight of their past 10 games.
“He’d be a guy that’s kind of irreplaceable,” Incaviglia said. “He does so many things well. But I’d love to see Juan get signed and get an opportunity to get to the big leagues because I think he’d take someone’s job. He really would.”