Chicago Cubs: Time to shut down Yu Darvish

Chicago Cubs “ace” Yu Darvish is back to the disabled list again, and it’s time to forget him for now.

I sincerely hope you haven’t eaten recently. If you have, you may want to come back and read this after you’ve had a chance to digest your food, because we’re about to get into some nauseating details about Chicago Cubs pitcher, Yu Darvish.

For a second, I was tempted to place the word pitcher in quotation marks, because so far this season, Darvish has done anything but that. He’s been more of a watcher to this point, having spent more time on the disabled list than not this year.

He has appeared in a limited number of games, though not nearly enough to earn his $25 million salary. In fact, when you break down his pay beyond just on a yearly basis, it’s gutwrenching. This season, Darvish has earned $3.125 million per game, $625,000 per inning, and $33,783.78 per pitch.

This is a far cry from not only what the Cubs are paying Darvish, but what they expected of him this year. Darvish was expected to be the “co-ace” of this staff along with Jon Lester. Yet, at least for now, the Cubs and fans would be wise to put Darvish in the rear-view mirror.

That’s because Darvish exited his rehab start on Sunday after throwing only one inning. He will have another MRI to try to discover the source of his pain. In fact, I predicted this outcome as soon as it was announced that he was making the rehab start.

Now, I’m not a fortune-teller, but based on his history this year, it wasn’t difficult to predict this outcome. There has been a lot of mystery surrounding his health and status throughout the year. So much so, that Alex Rodriguez questioned his toughness during a Sunday Night Baseball telecast.

I say all of this to say that Darvish has been more of a hindrance this season than a contributor. His status has forced his teammates, manager, and front office to come to his defense when his toughness has been questioned. It has no doubt been a source of frustration for the team all year.

For those reasons, the Cubs would be smart to simply shut him down for the rest of the season and eliminate any discussion that he could return. We are eleven days away from September, and Darvish hasn’t thrown more than one inning in a meaningful game in months. In reality, if he were to come back in a couple of weeks, what gives the Cubs any confidence he will be effective? Heck, he was wildly ineffective when he was on the mound.

The Cubs have managed to maintain the best record in the National League without him, and his status at this point has the potential to turn into a distraction.  Therefore, the Cubs would be wise to put that story to rest, along with Darvish’s right arm — which apparently needs it.