Chicago Cubs: How starting rotation stacks up against NL Central
By Ryan Sikes
After a successful second half last year, Yu Darvish headlines the Chicago Cubs rotation. How do they, as a group, stack up against the NL Central?
To say that Yu Darvish‘s time in a Chicago Cubs uniform got off to a rough start would be putting it mildly. Fresh off a six-year, $126 million deal, expectations were enormous for the former Texas Ranger and Los Angeles Dodger. He made just eight starts in 2018 and struggled through an injury-riddled year.
Flash forward to 2019, and it was more of the same through the first half of the year. While Darvish managed to remain healthy, his 5.01 ERA left many wondering if Theo Epstein made a mistake handing out such a substantial contract to, what was, a below-league average pitcher who was expected to be an ace.
However, Darvish flipped the switch in the second half, posted a 2.76 ERA in 81.2 innings with 118 strikeouts to just seven walks. He found a tremendous amount of success due to the increased usage of his cutter. On the year, Darvish utilized this pitch 36.5 percent of the time, compared to 13.5 percent in 2018.
He limited batters to a .195 average on his cutter, a pitch that had 3.1 more inches of a horizontal break than the league average. At 33-years-old, Darvish figures to headline the Cubs rotation in 2020, and he will look to build off a 3.0 WAR year. Let’s see who else will fill out the team’s starting rotation in the upcoming season.