Why Yu Darvish is the ultimate risk-reward signing for the title-chasing Cubs

The Chicago Cubs struck back in the NL Central arms race, inking Yu Darvish to a six-year contract worth a guaranteed $126 million.

The deal, which could pay Darvish up to $150 million overall, fills a glaring area of need for a team that’s made the NLCS three years in a row, with a little something else thrown in for good measure. With Jake Arrieta filing for free agency and John Lackey retiring, Chicago needed starting pitching help, even after nabbing Tyler Chatwood on a somewhat speculative three-year pact.

This is more than just a big-revenue team filling a hole by throwing money at a problem, though. By signing the four-time All-Star, the Cubs perked up what had been a quiet offseason for one of baseball’s glamour teams, and a shockingly quiet Hot Stove season for MLB as a whole.

The Cubs taking this long to sign Darvish isn’t merely a function of a slow-moving offseason. Few big-ticket free agents of recent vintage have brought this striking a combination of risk, and reward.

When he calls it quits one day, Darvish will go down as one of the greatest prodigies in baseball history. Six-foot-five, strong and athletic, with blazing fastball velocity and a beguiling array of breaking pitches, he was already a superstar at Tokohu High School in Japan. With that stardom came the frightening workloads that managers heap on star pitchers in their quest for the coveted Koshien National High School Baseball Championship. It was Darvish’s 2004 no-hitter in that tournament that rocketed interest in the big righty into orbit.

By age 18, Darvish was firing high-leverage innings at the pro level, for the Nippon Ham Fighters. At age 19, he led the Fighters to their first pennant in 25 years, while firing 149 2/3 innings and clocking a 2.89 ERA. That’s the great paradox of wunderkind pitchers, of course: The dazzling ability at a young age that makes scouts drool also make doctors and trainers wince at the prospect of rebuilding a damaged arm at some point in the future.

In Darvish’s case, that setback didn’t crop up until a decade after that magical no-no, with elbow inflammation knocking him out for the stretch run in 2014, followed by Tommy John surgery the following March. Going under the knife didn’t slow him down at first, though; on the contrary, Darvish’s fastball spiked to career-high levels after his return from surgery.

But after an impressive 17 starts in his 2016 return season, Darvish posted some of the worst numbers of his major league career in 2017, with his ERA spiking to a near career-worst 3.86, in large part due to the career-high 27 homers he surrendered over 31 starts. Still, Darvish remains one of the most prolific strikeout artists in baseball, ranking seventh among MLB starting pitchers in K rate since since his return.

Darvish also suffers from the incurable condition of being a pitcher. While the rate of Tommy John surgeries has dropped somewhat from recently terrifying peak levels, predicting how a pitcher will fare over the next six seasons is a fool’s errand of the highest degree. As data-heavy and details-focused as today’s front offices are, baseball by and large still doesn’t know a damn thing when it comes to predicting long-term pitching performance. Given that Darvish’s contract could take him past his 37th birthday in what’s increasingly becoming a young man’s sport, it’s hard not to see the red flags flashing everywhere.

The flip side to all that gloom and doom is there are real rewards to be had here. For starters, the going rate for free agents is approaching $9 million per win, if we use Wins Above Replacement as a baseline. WAR is by no means a perfect measuring tool, and a panoply of other factors can and do affect how much teams pay for talent on the open market. Still, the Cubs have valued Darvish as roughly a 2.5-win player based on the $21 million a year he’ll rake in. Yes, his history of big workloads and elbow issues are alarming. He’s also going to make less per year than the far, far, far less talented Jordan Zimmerman got back in 2015. That’s a happy outcome.  

There’s also this: The Cubs might not have to keep paying Darvish until he’s 37. According to ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick, they might not have to pay him for more than two seasons, if Crasnick’s report of a potential opt-out clause after two years proves to be accurate.

Most importantly, the Cubs are still rolling out a loaded core led by All-Star corners Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo. That core became threatened by the upstart Brewers this offseason, after Milwaukee reeled in two toolsy-as-hell outfielders in Christian Yelich (who the Crew liked enough to trade multiple quality prospects to get) and Lorenzo Cain (who’d been the highest-paid free agent this winter before the Darvish signing).

When the Brewers made an offer to Darvish as a potential coup de grace, the Cubs had good reason to get nervous, and to reach into their war chest. With staff ace Jimmy Nelson possibly out until June and Milwaukee already loading up on talent, expect the club’s attention to turn to other free agents such as Lance Lynn or Alex Cobb, with the possibility of an Arrieta signing looming as a delicious way to further stoke what could be an electrifying NL Central race (even if some of the computers don’t agree). With Darvish off the board, don’t be surprised if this winter’s stalemate breaks, and the other significant arms still out there get scooped up in the next few days.

One popular narrative that emerged last fall painted Darvish as an overly sensitive soul who folds under pressure. His ugly outings in Game 3 and Game 7 of the World Series, in which Darvish became just the second pitcher in World Series history to last fewer than two innings in two different starts, turned whispers into horrified screams.

Color me skeptical. Sportswriters love both post-hoc analysis and psychoanalyzing players almost as much as they love Springsteen. Barry Bonds was a flashy jerk of a player who couldn’t come through in the clutch … until he annihilated everything in his path during the Giants’ 2002 run to the Fall Classic. Alex Rodriguez was a prima donna stat-padder who saved his home runs for 8-0 games … until he put the Yankees on his back and led them to their 27th World Series crown in 2009.

Baseball’s playoffs whack us with the dreaded one-punch of misleadingly tiny sample sizes and heightened stakes, which can cause to lose our minds and push half-baked theories, rather than just accepting the universal truth that sometimes, bad things just happen. Darvish crapped the bed in two straight starts, with the entire baseball world watching … and also dominated in his two previous 2017 postseason starts, allowing a single run in both his NLDS and NLCS outings last year.

The Cubs have World Series aspirations of their own, and there’s a good chance Darvish will get multiple opportunities to prove his mettle in October. The smart money says that this deal will still sink or swim based on how well his oft-used golden arm holds up under the 30-start grind of multiple regular seasons, not the weird randomness that washes over playoff baseball. Yu can bet the house on it.

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Israel, Iran Lurch Toward Confrontation as Border Region Boils

Israel and Iran moved closer to confrontation in Syria as rising tensions erupted into the most serious standoff between the sides since the Syrian civil war began seven years ago.

Israel on Saturday struck 12 targets in Syria, including four Iranian targets, in a “large-scale attack” after an Iranian military drone penetrated Israeli airspace, the Israel Defense Forces said. An F-16 fighter plane crashed in northern Israel after coming under fire from Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, and the pilots were hospitalized with moderate to severe injuries. 

Saturday’s confrontation comes amid Israeli warnings that it won’t let Syria become an Iranian base and will intercept weapons shipments bound for Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Iran and allied militias have fought alongside government troops against rebels and Islamist factions in the Syrian war.

“The question is whether the Iranians will respond or lower the fire at this stage,” said Ephraim Kam, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “My feeling is that they don’t have an interest in escalation.”

‘Right and duty’

On Saturday night, after hours of consultations with the defense minister and military chief of staff, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian drone flight as a “brazen” attempt to violate Israel’s sovereignty, and said it was Israel’s “right and duty” to respond.

“Israel’s face is turned toward peace, but we will continue to defend ourselves with determination against any attack on us and against any Iranian attempt to base itself in Syria or anywhere else,” Netanyahu said. “Iran seeks to use Syrian territory to attack Israel for its professed goal of destroying Israel.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Iranian television Saturday that countries are mistaken if they think bombing their neighbors will bring good results, Reuters reported.

Israel has attacked inside Syria frequently since the civil war began in March 2011, targeting Syrian military posts and arms shipments bound for Hezbollah. Until this weekend, occasional responses by Syria and Hezbollah against Israel had caused little damage.

Israeli officials wouldn’t confirm if the F-16 had been downed by a Syrian missile, as teams combed the crash site for remains to analyze. Across the border the event was taken as a victory, with dozens of Lebanese celebrating and waving Hezbollah’s flag.

New rules

The downing of the plane marks “the beginning of a new strategic stage that puts an end to violations of Syrian airspace and territory,” Hezbollah said in a statement. “Today’s formulas mean the old formulas have fallen.”

Israeli media reported that the Iranian military drone was shot down near Beit Shean, close to the border with Jordan, after flying for about 90 seconds in Israeli airspace. Hadashot News reported the Israeli counterattack in Syria was believed to have destroyed a significant portion of the country’s air-defense system.

Netanyahu has made a number of visits to Russia, the dominant player in Syria, to lay out Israel’s red lines and ask President Vladimir Putin to rein in Iran. Netanyahu said he spoke to Putin again Saturday, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and that the Israeli and Russian militaries would continue their coordination to avoid inadvertent confrontation in Syria. 

In a statement on its website Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was concerned about the Israeli attack and said it was unacceptable to create threats to the safety of Russian military personnel in Syria.

‘Red Card’

Israeli politicians from across the spectrum largely backed the government’s response. Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said that after Israel’s repeated warnings on Iran in Syria — what he called a “yellow card” for the Islamic Republic — Saturday’s strike represented a “red card.” Tzipi Livni of the opposition Zionist Union faction said the government must do more to build international backing for Israeli attacks in Syria.

“What we’re watching is an attempt by the Iranians to shape the situation in Syria as we approach the end of the civil war in a way that serves Iranian interests,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, former director general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry and now a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Israel “showed how determined it is not to allow Iran to have the Middle East the way it wants it.”