Yu Darvish for Kyle Davies: A reassessment

When the Chicago Cubs sent star pitcher Yu Darvish to the San Diego Padres last winter, the trade was widely panned as an early white flag deal on the part of the Cubs. With the hindsight provided by having completed one-third of the 2021 season, how does the trade look today?

The seven-player trade, announced on Dec. 29, packaged Darvish and his personal catcher, Victor Caratini, to San Diego. In return, the Cubs got starter Zach Davies plus four prospects: Owen Cassie, Ismael Mena, Reginald Preciado, and Yeison Santana.

Revisiting the Yu Darvish-Kyle Davies deal

The original perception was that the trade was a big win for the Padres – striving to run down the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West — and a salary dump for the Cubs, who had already divested themselves of both Kyle Schwarber and Jon Lester.

Darvish was due to make $23 million in 2021, nearly three times as much as Davies’ $8.63 million salary. The Padres were also on the hook to Darvish for another $39 million through 2023; Davies would be a free agent at the end of the 2021 season.

The first two months of the 2021 season have only affirmed the consensus short-term judgment that the trade was a win for San Diego. In fact, it may end up costing the Cubs a division championship and post-season run.

Through a dozen starts, Darvish has been the ace of the San Diego staff. He is 6-1 with a 2.25 ERA and is averaging six innings per start. In only two of his starts has he given up more than two earned runs. He has accumulated a 1.7 WAR, meaning his personal presence has been worth about 1.7 games to San Diego’s hopes to date.

That 1.7 WAR works out to about 4.7 WAR when projected over a full season, a figure that could make this Darvish’s best season since 2013.

His Padres find themselves in a three-way race for the NL West with the Dodgers and also with the surprising San Francisco Giants.

The Cubs hoped Davies would become a cheap, reliable replacement for Darvish as No. 2 starter behind Kyle Hendricks. So far that hasn’t happened. Through his first 12 starts, encompassing just 55 innings, Davies is just 2-3 with a 4.94 ERA.

On Thursday, Davies lasted just one out into the fifth inning against the Giants in what became a 7-2 San Francisco victory. He allowed eight hits and four runs, all of them earned. His WAR to date is -0.1, making the net short-term gain to San Diego of those two players alone nearly two games.

With the Cubs locked in a close NL Central race of their own, that two-game swing could prove to be pivotal. Chicago enters play Friday a game and a half ahead of St. Louis in the division, with Milwaukee just another half game behind.

The rest of the deal’s parts have had little short-term impact on their teams’ fortunes, and the long-term impact, if any, of the other five players is – as is often the case with prospects — speculative. Caratini is the only one in the majors.

Expected to fill a personal catcher role with Darvish, he has become San Diego’s starter behind the plate. But he’s batting just .217 with a .662 OPS that is poor even by the watered-down standards of 2021. He’s thrown out just 12 percent of base-stealers.

Even so, the Cubs could have used Caratini. Their backup plan to Willson Contreras was veteran Austin Romine. But Romine has made just nine appearances behind the plate and hit just .111 before being sent to the 60-day injury list.

The fill-in, P.J. Higgins, got his first big league hit this week. He’s batting .063.

Expectations around the Cubs have changed over the past 20 days. They were 18-20 on May 15 and trending toward self-destruct mode by the trade deadline, with potential free agents Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and Anthony Rizzo all considered available.

Since then, the Cubs have won 14 of 18 and moved past the Cardinals into the division’s top spot. Suddenly it makes sense for Chicago to hold on to the team’s stars and make a serious run at postseason success.

But that revised forecast calls into even deeper question the wisdom of dumping Darvish for Davies and prospects in December. Based purely on their performances to date, a Cubs pennant run would be far more plausible with Darvish on the mound every fifth day than with Davies.

The opposite is true, of course, of the Padres. Given the position of the Padres relative to the Dodgers, and also relative to the surprising Giants, it appears that general manager A.J. Preller did exactly what his team needed to do in acquiring Darvish.

The long-term assessment of the trade hinges on two things. One is San Diego’s postseason performance this year. Any deal is worth making if it wins you a World Series, and Darvish could do that.

The second long-term factor is the future performance, if any, of the four prospects the Cubs acquired. Those four were Yeison Santana, Owen Caissie, Ismael Mena and Reginald Preciado.

Thus far, none of the four have even made much of a statistical impression in the Cubs’ minor league system, a system that is not considered one of the game’s stronger ones. All, however, are young – Santana, at 20, is the oldest – so if they have a future it’s a couple years away.

In theory, then, it’s possible that this becomes one of those Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz trades, where a team sells 20 years of its future for a run at a single post-season.

For the immediate future, the Darvish-for-Davies trade looks very much like it did when it was made in December: a solid win for the Padres. It puts San Diego in position to contend seriously for the World Series.

Conversely, and particularly if Chicago remains in contention in the Central, losing Darvish appears to compromise the Cubs’ chances of that same post-season success. Davies simply has not been a replacement.

The one way the Cubs could salvage some serious long-term value from the trade is if they are able to use the money they saved by trading Yu Darvish to re-sign one or more of their star free agents-to-be, Bryant, Rizzo, or Baez.

That, of course, is a story yet to be told.