Chicago Cubs shouldn’t give up on Yu Darvish, yet

Yu Darvish’s tenure with the Cubs is off to a rough start, but it’s way too early to deem him a waste of money.

The Chicago Cubs signed Yu Darvish to a six-year, $126 million contract. While that was under the AAV of what he was expected to get, not everyone was thrilled with it. The Cubs needed pitching, and he was the best available. But that’s still not going to make people happy. Especially when some wanted them to go after Chris Archer, again. (Really? What’s the obsession?)

So here we go into spring training and Darvish rakes. He pitches to a 2.79 ERA in five games, with 20 strikeouts in 19 1/3 innings. In fact, all of the Cubs starters threw well. But this is spring training, and these numbers won’t count. But come on, he’s still going to pitch well, right?

The answer to that was a hard no, at least in Darvish’s debut. There were two glaring problems with his start. First, the five runs allowed. After being near untouchable in the spring, Darvish allowed almost as many runs in 4 1/3 innings (5) as he did all spring (6).

The other concern was the pitch count. Darvish tossed 102 pitches–59 for strikes–in that 4 1/3 innings. That’s a high number for Darvish or any other pitcher. And on top of that, it was against the Miami Marlins, of all teams. Clearly, there has to be an issue here if he can’t shut down a team of–well, mostly no-names–right?

While I know that there is concern about Darvish, there’s no need to panic, either. Jon Lester and Jose Quintana also struggled in their first go of it this year. But I’m also not writing off either of them.

For Darvish, it seemed to be a lack of fastball command. Something that he needs, to be honest. So without that, Darvish was a little out of rhythm and ended up with the high pitch count. And nerves? Well, Darvish didn’t think so.

"“No nerves, I was out there, feeling comfortable, but it seems like every time I pitched the first game in Japan, things didn’t go so well. I don’t know why that happens. Today, everything was fine. No nerves.”"

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For now, people shouldn’t write off Darvish as a “bust,” especially after just one game. Last season I remember Brian Duensing getting off to a slow start and I was ready to release him. Good thing I have no say in the matter.

Darvish is going to be fine. If you expected a 20-game winner out of him, you are sadly mistaken. But the Cubs will need him to go 6+ innings to put the bullpen in the best spot. Pitchers have bad games, even early in the season. It’s how they perform later in the year that will matter. And before you go there, he was tipping his pitches in the World Series. That’s why.