This will be the second entirely lost year of Darvish’s career, as he missed all of 2015 due to a Tommy John procedure. He has had some bouts of elbow soreness in the decade since that surgery, most prominently a stint on the 60-day injured list this season stemming from a bout of elbow inflammation that arose during Spring Training.
It wasn’t until July 7 that Darvish finally made his season debut for the Padres, and he clearly didn’t look 100 percent while posting a 5.38 ERA over 15 starts and 72 innings. Small sample size notwithstanding, Darvish’s 23% strikeout rate was the lowest of his 13 MLB seasons, and his chase and whiff rates were far below average. His 6.4% walk rate was still quite strong and Darvish did a very good job of limiting hard contact overall, but batters tended to thrive when actually squaring up on the veteran, as Darvish allowed 14 homers over his 72 frames.
More to come…