Cubs Sign Yu Darvish

Yu Darvish: 10-12, 3.86 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 209/58 K/BB, 186.2 IP
Six years, $126 million, up to $24 million in incentives

We didn't think it would take until mid-February, but Yu Darvish signed the first nine-figure contract of the offseason. The Cubs ran away with the NL Central in 2016 and 2017, and they have quietly retooled their pitching staff to ensure it happens again in 2018, adding Tyler Chatwood, Drew Smyly, Brandon Morrow, and Steve Cishek in addition to Darvish while the Cardinals added Marcell Ozuna and the Brewers picked up Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, and Jhoulys Chacin. Darvish joins one of the better rotations in baseball, one that features Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, Jose Quintana, and some combination of Drew Smyly/Eddie Butler/Mike Montgomery. Darvish is on somewhat of a downward career trajectory at least in terms of ERA, as it jumped from 2.83 in 2013 and 3.06 in 2014 to 3.41 in 2016 and 3.86 in 2017 (he sat out 2015 with Tommy John surgery), and his FIP (3.83) and xFIP (3.62) were both career worsts. However, between his time in the AL in Texas (first 22 starts) and the NL in Los Angeles (9 starts), his ERA (4.01 to 3.44), FIP (3.99 to 3.38), and xFIP (3.82 to 3.19) all dropped dramatically, and he is still a very useful mid-rotation starter. Those are hard to find nowadays, and in short demand, $126 million is a fair price. People may be worried about his poor World Series performance (eight earned runs in 3.1 innings over two starts), but small samples tend to get more credit than they deserve, and the bad starts are probably more due to random chance than any kind of inability to perform in the clutch or negative career trend. For his career, Darvish is 56-42 with a 3.42 ERA, a 1.18 WHIP, and a 1021/307 strikeout to walk ratio in 131 starts. 31 years old now, he'll be 37 at the end of the deal.