Believe in Yu

On Opening Day, let's discuss how Yu Darvish became a different pitcher in his mid-30s and if it's sustainable.

I’m generally an optimist, especially at the start of a baseball season, but Yu Darvish makes me just a tiny bit nervous because his recent success is a small sample size compared to the rest of his career, when he hasn’t been quite this good. Who the heck becomes significantly better at this sport in their mid-30s, several years after Tommy John surgery?

While Yu has the ability to strike out any batter at any time, and will occasionally strike out a bunch in a row in a way that makes you dream about what could be, he can also be maddeningly inconsistent. Walking batters and giving up home runs is just part of what he does, or did, in between mowing guys down with pitches that bend in ways that pitches don’t usually bend.

In last season’s short season, Darvish changed that. His 1.66 BB/9 was far and away the lowest walk rate of his career, and he did it while keeping his K/9 rate over 11. He also, somehow, posted the lowest HR/9 rate of his career. All of these things combined explain why he posted the lowest ERA of his career by a mile. There were indicators that these numbers were starting to get better for him during the 2019 season, but 2020 they got to elite levels and stayed there.

Was it a fluke? Is it for real? The optimist in me says that Yu figured something out, and you could make the same argument by looking at what he threw:

This is an easy story to tell. Yu turned the cutter into his main pitch/fastball and got away from the 4-seamer, and as a result he was able to get batters to ground out more than they used to.

Usually, we only talk about launch angle when discussing hitters (specifically, Eric Hosmer), but Darvish seems to have taken the approach of trying to ruin the launch angle of the hitters facing him:

The launch angle going down while the cutter usage going up can’t just be a coincidence. I’ll even go out on a limb and say Yu either has more control with the cutter or is more confident in throwing it over the plate, and that’s what has led to his walk rate (and WHIP) going down the last two seasons.

Hopefully, this is the guy we see as the ace of the Padres, today and going forward. That would mean he gets back into the Cy Young conversation again this season and that the team’s championship aspirations are very much alive.

The New Look Padres

A little after 1pm local time today, a pitch will be thrown by Yu Darvish at Petco Park. In all likelihood, that pitch will be caught by Victor Caratini and then tossed back to Darvish. In almost any other scenario, this would seem unremarkable.

But it’s not unremarkable. Yu Darvish is the highest paid pitcher in the history of the San Diego Padres, and he’ll be pitching in front of the highest paid first baseman, shortstop, third baseman, and right fielder in team history. Collectively, this is the most money ever spent on a Padres team, and the reason it happened hilariously unpredictable: A very wealthy guy bought the team to cure his boredom, not to pad his coffers.

The subsequent beneficiaries of Peter Seidler’s attempts to cure his own boredom are, of course, long-suffering Padres fans. Not coincidentally, this highly-paid roster also has high expectations. Championship aspirations, if only they could find a way to topple the Goliath that lives 125 miles north in Chavez Ravine. As if baseball, maybe the most romantic sport, needed a David vs. Goliath narrative to make it tug at the fan’s heart strings a little more. Speaking of fans…

It’s been a while

It has been a whopping 550 days since the San Diego Padres have played baseball in front of real live fans at Petco Park. That’s a long time!

Remember the uniform unveiling?

There have been zero games played in front of fans at Petco Park since this happened. Today marks the first time that fans will be able watch Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Eric Hosmer in those uniforms while sitting in the ballpark.

When you ask someone why baseball is romanticized, they’ll often tell you that it’s because of all of the things about the game itself:

It’s slow, so it’s easy to follow. You can clearly see the players’ faces at all times, and they’re wearing pajamas instead of padding. It’s an individual sport and a team sport, at the same time. There’s really nothing like it.

But, added on top of that is how baseball interacts with its fans in person. Fans have the ability to talk to players during the game if they find the right spot, whether that’s right by the batter’s circle or on the wall in the outfield. All of these things add up to a more personal experience when you buy your ticket to a baseball game than any other sport, in my opinion.

The fans that are lucky enough to be going to today’s game are going the be the first of us to be reminded of how great it is to be there, but the players will also be reminded of the feeling when they make big contact or a diving catch and hear the crowd explode in support. Sure, the players play the game for the money and the accolades, but they get little bits of adrenaline that are otherwise impossible when they can make a crowd of people they don’t even know go absolutely bananas.