The Padres and right-hander Yu Darvish are in settlement on a six-year extension that’ll run by the 2028 season, AJ Cassavell and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com report (Twitter link). Darvish, a Wasserman shopper, was already underneath contract for $18M in 2023. That means the deal will tack on 5 years and $90M value of recent cash to his contract, which can carry by Darvish’s age-41 season.
It’s a exceptional contract contemplating Darvish’s age, though at a median annual worth of $18M, he hardly wants to carry out like an ace so as to proceed to justify the worth tag. That’s the identical AAV the Phillies dedicated to Taijuan Walker this offseason, as an illustration, and over the lifetime of the brand new contract, the AAV for high-end pitching solely figures to proceed to improve. That mentioned, any long-term deal working by a pitcher’s age-41 season — Darvish will flip 42 about six weeks earlier than the contract ends — is clearly teeming with danger.
As issues at present stand, nevertheless, Darvish stays among the many sport’s finest starters. The right-hander’s age-35 marketing campaign noticed him pile up 194 2/3 innings of three.10 ERA ball with strikeout and stroll charges (25.6% and 4.8%) that have been much better than league common (significantly the stroll price). Darvish’s 95 mph common fastball was really the second-best mark of his profession, and people 194 2/3 frames have been the second-highest single-season complete he’s logged since signing with the Rangers again in 2012.
Darvish had Tommy John surgical procedure again in March 2015, lacking everything of that season and a considerable chunk of the 2016 marketing campaign whereas recovering. His 2018 season with the Cubs, who initially signed him to the six-year, $126M deal on which he’d beforehand been taking part in, was restricted to simply 40 innings thanks to a triceps damage. Since that point, nevertheless, Darvish has been fairly sturdy. He made all 12 of his begins in the course of the shortened 2020 season, and in every of his previous three 162-game seasons, he’s taken the hill at the least 30 instances.
The Padres had been set to lose each Darvish and Blake Snell to free company following the 2023 season, with each heading into the ultimate seasons of their respective contracts. Darvish, nevertheless, now appears doubtless to not solely stay in San Diego, however end out his profession as a member of the Padres underneath president of baseball operations A.J. Preller, who performed a significant function in signing Darvish when he was within the Rangers entrance workplace. Darvish joins San Diego native Joe Musgrove, who inked a five-year extension final summer time, because the bedrock of the Padres rotation for the foreseeable future.
Keeping Darvish underneath contract is of explicit profit with the ultimate two spots on the beginning workers already going to relievers who’ll be making the shift to full-time starters in 2023: Nick Martinez and Seth Lugo. Both gamers have participant choices on their contracts for 2024, which means if issues go easily they’ll doubtless choose out of the contracts and take a look at free company on the heels of improved platform seasons. If the shift to beginning roles doesn’t work out, then the Padres will clearly be in search of various choices, be they in-house or exterior acquisitions. Either means, prior to the Darvish extension it was potential — if not downright doubtless — that San Diego would’ve entered the 2023-24 offseason looking for as many as 4 beginning pitchers. That’s now not the case.
Darvish carries further significance from a long-term vantage level when contemplating the Padres’ dealings lately. Preller is among the many sport’s most aggressive executives on the commerce market, and with the Friars in an all-out, win-at-all-costs blitz, they’ve proven little concern with dismantling their once-vaunted farm system as a way of bringing in main league expertise. Trades of names like MacKenzie Gore, Chris Paddack, Cal Quantrill and Luis Patino have depleted the group’s pitching pipeline, whereas the final attrition (accidents and/or poor performances) from the remaining prospects like Ryan Weathers, Adrian Morejon and Pedro Avila depart the system with out a lot instant assistance on the horizon.
Beyond the sheer want for long-term assist in the rotation, there’s certainly a component of economic creativity at play right here. Darvish’s pre-existing six-year, $126M contract got here with a $21M luxurious hit (based mostly on the contract’s AAV). Since this new deal is being tacked on to the tip of that previous contract, it successfully turns into an 11-year, $216M deal. That comes with a diminished luxurious hit of $19.64M. It’s not a significant financial savings, however the Padres have been proper up towards the third tier of luxurious penalization, so any newly created respiratory room is sort of welcome. Once crossing into that third luxurious tier, a group is penalized not solely within the type of steeper tax charges, but in addition by having its prime decide within the subsequent 12 months’s draft dropped by 10 locations.
The Darvish extension places a long way between the group and that significantly undesirable slap on the wrist. It additionally makes issues barely simpler for Preller and his workers in the event that they hope to stay underneath that tax degree however nonetheless need to create some wiggle room for in-season acquisitions on the commerce market.
If the $273M tax barrier stays a tough stopping level for the Padres as soon as the season’s underway, that’ll doubtless require the Padres to persuade a commerce companion to embrace some cash or tackle a contract in return. Nonetheless, this further little bit of area may show helpful in accommodating extra complementary additions like bullpen assist or added bench depth. Alternatively, it may present essential area to finally choose the contract of a non-roster veteran with a wage of modest be aware — somebody like reliever Craig Stammen or catcher Pedro Severino, as an illustration.
As we noticed with the Padres’ 11-year signing of Xander Bogaerts — and their reported overtures towards Aaron Judge and Trea Turner — the group is clearly comfy paying a participant into his early 40s if it means decreasing the general luxurious invoice. All of these affords, Bogaerts and Darvish included, featured annual charges comfortably shy of the place the gamers might need in any other case landed on a extra typical construction. Darvish’s newly added $90M in ensures, as an illustration, may maybe have been obtained over a three- or definitely a four-year deal had he opted to play out the ultimate season of his contract and return to free company. Instead, he’ll successfully take three- or four-year cash and unfold it out over a five-year extension of his contract so as to stay with a contending group and a setting the place he’s clearly comfy.
Those advantages, ultimately, are usually secondary. The Padres clearly had a want to prolong Darvish and sure agreed upon the requisite {dollars} earlier than figuring out the size of the contract and, thereby, the extent to which they might tamp down their tax invoice. The finish result’s that Darvish and Musgrove will proceed to type a formidable one-two punch within the years to come. And whereas paying Darvish $18M in his age-40 and age-41 seasons would possibly show an untenable final result, it additionally maybe creates some present-day financial savings by way of luxurious taxes that may make these last years a bit simpler to abdomen.
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