Yu Darvish is one of my favorite pitchers to ever grace the game of baseball.
Since beginning his career in the majors after coming over from Japan in 2012, he’s accomplished more things than most hurlers could ever dream of. He’s appeared in five All-Star games, finished second in Cy Young voting twice, appeared in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, earned a slew of awards, including two MVPs in his first five years in Japan, and played the sport at its highest level possible stateside – the World Series. That last part notably didn’t go well (perhaps because of a certain cheating scandal?) but it’s still something that a lot of players can’t say they did.
Most recently, Darvish made more history by becoming the third native Japanese pitcher to cross 200 wins between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball. His name now resides alongside the great Hideo Nomo (201) and Hiroki Kuroda (203), both quite good players that he deservedly belongs in the company of. Nomo especially will forever hold a spot in major league history for blazing a trail for future NPB-to-MLB stars like Darvish.
If Nomo merely walked the path, Darvish ran down it. He’s still got plenty of career left – the Padres inked a deal with him to keep him in San Diego brown through 2028 – but he’s already defined himself as likely the greatest Japanese pitcher to ever play in the majors. He’s been worth an impressive 35.3 fWAR, with a career 3.57 ERA, 3.51 FIP, and a dazzling 10.62 strikeouts per nine that places him sixth all-time behind only the best modern strikeout artists – Blake Snell, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, and Robbie Ray. He has yet to match Nomo’s workload, but at 1677 2/3 IP across 276 games started and with several years left on his contract, it’s likely he’ll one day become the most tenured Japanese pitcher in MLB as well.
That’s all well and good. But why do I specifically like him? Stats are awesome and good players are often more beloved, but there’s usually something more that makes a player stand out in our minds. I think there’s an air around Yu Darvish that makes him so intriguing to watch. It dates back to his early days in Texas.
Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly keeping a close eye on Darvish during his days in Japan. I would’ve been eight when he won his first MVP and Eiji Sawamura Award. I did, however, get to see Darvish play in Texas, where he became a sensation. Standing at 6′ 5″, he was already a standout compared to other Japanese players who made the jump over to the U.S. His first year was an exciting one, beginning with him winning Rookie of the Month honors in April and making his first All-Star team. As a fun aside, the first career hit he gave up was to fellow Japanese superstar Ichiro Suzuki which is just an incredible coincidence, even if they would’ve been facing each other regularly.
All told it was a successful year with a 3.90 ERA. A successful year, but not particularly close to the heights he would reach in the two seasons that followed. 2013 would be his first brush with the Cy Young, posting a 2.83 ERA and coming in second behind Mad Max Scherzer, while 2014, though injury-shortened as a precursor to Tommy John surgery, was another All-Star year with a 3.06 ERA. However, I want to look at these two years through the lens of strikeouts, because oh man, did Darvish rack up Ks in his early years. He racked them up so fast that he became the fastest pitcher ever to 500 strikeouts, besting known whiff artist Kerry Wood. That’s what happens when your first three years boast K/9 rates of around 11.
Three years in, Darvish had established himself as a suffocating pitcher. He never was the best in a year, but he felt like he could dominate your team on any given day and he could do it all with a calm and collected demeanor that gave way to fiery passion when he was dealing on the mound. Let’s fast forward a bit now to 2018. Darvish, after his disastrous World Series following an otherwise successful trade to the Dodgers mid-season in 2017, joined the Cubs, a team he had just gotten through dominating in the NLCS. Theo Epstein essentially said “I want that,” and made it happen late in the offseason. I, for one, was beyond happy to see such an electric player join my team to help them in the push back to the World Series.
Yu Darvish was a disaster for the 2018 Cubs.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Darvish pitched to his worst ERA at 4.95 and only started eight games before a long, drawn-out injury saga ended his season early with fears of a potential second Tommy John surgery. That ERA is a little misleading because it FELT so much worse. It’s exactly the scenario everyone has irrational fears over in the back of their mind when their team signs a massive contract. 2019 didn’t start much better. Through the first half, Darvish had a 5.01 ERA. This was looking like an albatross contract.
Then, the second half of 2019 rolled around and Darvish became Darvish again. A 2.76 ERA and a night-and-day difference across the board as he recorded only 7 walks compared to 49 in the first half and 13 Ks/9 compared to 10.3. That performance brought his ERA to a much more palatable 3.98 mark. He’d only continue to build off of that performance in 2020, the pandemic-shortened season, by posting a career-best 2.02 ERA and league-leading 2.23 FIP. This was the Darvish I always wanted and seeing him finish second in Cy Young voting again made me excited for what he could do in 2021.
And then he was traded as a salary dump. Biblical losses, Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts claimed. This would then be followed by the complete dismantling of the 2016 World Series team that broke a 108-year curse. As much as I loved those players, it was the right time to avoid running themselves off a cliff with a barren farm system. We could all see the writing on the wall. The Darvish trade, however, is the one that sticks in my craw. It’s the most nakedly cynical and cheap move of the bunch and still has yet to bear fruit at the major league level. The clear-cut ace of the team, who could’ve been used in that last dance, was dumped, along with a very competent backup catcher in Victor Caratini, for four high-risk prospects and Zach Davies. In hindsight, the infusion of talent may have been justified, but it still didn’t gel with what a serious team should look like.
All of that is to say I really, really like Yu Darvish as a pitcher, and seeing him shipped off with three years on his contract after his best season with the team sucked. I could talk about his time in San Diego so far, but I feel I’d be treading the same ground. Instead, I want to look at the personal side of Darvish, because, at the end of the day, his personality is why I really love him.
Yu Darvish, the Person
Yu Darvish is a Grade-A Twitter (now X) troll. Honestly, he’s got an incredible sense of humor. In 2019, he responded to a comment that he described as “weird.” When former Cubs Insider writer Corey Freedman asked for a proper translation, he responded, “His twitter name is fried chicken, and he said some weird things to me, so I told him to eat fried chicken for every meal until he dies.”
After news of the Astros sign-stealing scandal broke, he also made his opinion known that he wasn’t a fan of Houston keeping their trophy and World Series title after the sign-stealing scandal. When one Astros fan taunted back with a photo of the 2017 trophy, Darvish responded, “Gorgeous trash can! I like it!” Before that, during the 2019 World Series, he also delivered a clapback to Justin Verlander nearly two years in the making. For context, during a Cubs game against the Brewers, Darvish knocked a base hit into the right field corner at Wrigley Field and, shockingly, had a shot at a triple… until he slipped and fell rounding second. Verlander saw the moment and tweeted “Yu.... Not doing a lot here to help us dispel the pitchers aren’t athletes thing.”
Flash forward to 2019 and Verlander makes a play in the Fall Classic he’d rather forget, diving to stop a ball only to accidentally throw it against his own leg when he comes up with it. You know exactly how Darvish responded.
Baseball, in my opinion, is made by its personalities. There’s a reason why players like Joey Votto, Adrian Beltre, Stephen Vogt, David Ortiz, and Andrew McCutchen were and are so widely beloved in the league. Beyond being good to Hall of Fame caliber players, they also knew how to have fun on and off the field. Darvish is absolutely one of those players and it certainly shows through his teammates.
Former Cubs first baseman and captain Anthony Rizzo stuck by Darvish amid his struggles and the pitcher later returned the favor by honoring/trolling his old friend by using his walk-up music in San Diego. The Padres pitchers apparently took a liking to him as well. A hilarious video from 2022 shows Mike Clevinger, Sean Manaea, MacKenzie Gore, and Blake Snell following the veteran out of the dugout during warm-ups, mimicking his every move as he enjoyed a chill stroll around. It’s honestly adorable.
Adding to the strangeness of Darvish is his pitch mix. He’s been on record as having as many as 11 pitches. He’s a notorious tinkerer with his arsenal, from a standard four-seam fastball to a knuckle curveball he picked up from Craig Kimbrel and honed based on video of Shane Bieber, a splitter which Nomo helped him hone, a slow-curve, a slider, multiple cutters, and much more. He even developed “The Supreme” with the Cubs, a hybrid of a splitter and two-seamer. This is awesome and it only becomes more cool when you see every pitch in a single overlay.
On top of everything, Darvish has simply been a class act throughout his MLB tenure, from positive social media interactions with fans to more involved relationships. This year saw him finally meet one of his longtime fans, “Future Mind” owner Kwang Hee-Lee, at his coffee shop in Seoul, years after he had sent the man one of his gloves as part of a giveaway. The entire story is beyond heartwarming and part of what makes Darvish a player worth rooting for.
As a Cubs fan, I have plenty of gratitude for the good words of recommendation he’s given the organization to prospective free agents considering a move to Chicago. It’s something he has zero obligation to do as part of another team, but incredibly kind nonetheless. However, the moment I always think back to as a show of Darvish’s character came in the 2017 World Series when Yuli Gurriel made an offensive gesture toward the veteran right-hander. It was an ugly display on baseball’s biggest and brightest stage, yet, while he was disappointed by Gurriel’s actions and called them disrespectful, Darvish also responded with compassion.
All together, that encompasses why I love Yu Darvish. From Japan to the U.S., from the Olympics to Seoul, he has been nothing but a fiery competitor, an intimidating presence on the mound with the air of a superstar, and one of the most entertaining individuals to play the game of baseball. He’s also handled the spotlight with grace, standing out as one of the good guys in the league. After 200 wins, I look forward to seeing him continue to put numbers until the day he finally walks off the mound for good.
Bunting For Power 