Yu Darvish, Cliff Lee, and Everyone’s Loss
Maybe the problem is on our end. Maybe the problem is the increasingly unrealistic expectation of health, establishing a psychological baseline no longer supported by the modern game. In this game, pitchers get hurt, and while pitchers have always gotten hurt, because pitching is a dangerous thing, the sense is things are getting worse, and we have to adjust to what that means. Maybe we just need to mentally brace ourselves for the seemingly inevitable blows. Last season, the elbow robbed us of Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez, among so many others. Already this season, we came in nervous about Masahiro Tanaka, and now the elbow might have claimed Yu Darvish and Cliff Lee.
The two have different injuries. Darvish has a slight tear of the UCL, and the overwhelming likelihood is Tommy John surgery that’ll knock him out until into next season. Lee doesn’t seem to have a UCL problem, but he still might have a UCL problem, and even if he doesn’t, he’s dealing with the same discomfort that forced him to be shut down last summer, and if Lee requires a surgical fix, the estimate is a recovery of 6-8 months. Darvish might try to pitch through, but we know how that usually goes. Lee might try to pitch through, but in the best-case scenario, that means pitching through pain. We might not see Darvish until the middle of 2016. We might not see Lee ever again on a major-league mound. It’s too early to know anything for sure, except that the news of the last few days has changed the baseball landscape.
We have to start with one of them, so we might as well start with Lee. When Lee was hurting last summer, he was given a high chance of non-surgical recovery. It remains possible this will just prove to be the breaking up of some scar tissue, but the other possibilities are worse, and the Phillies are understandably alarmed. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that a major Lee injury wouldn’t cost the Phillies an excellent shot at a pennant, since, you know, but that’s like saying it’s okay that your car got totaled because your house burned down. A dark bigger picture is little consolation for a dark smaller picture, and every team wants to win. Maybe more importantly, in the Phillies’ case, every bad team wants to improve the future, and Lee’s now an extremely uncertain trade piece.
The Phillies were already looking at having to include some money, to get a return for a healthy Lee. This setback will deter all suitors, for at least a number of months. No longer is there any possibility of a deal in March, since no team knows what they’d be getting. If Lee gets moved, it’ll be for a reduced package in the middle of the summer. And the odds now are far lower than they were a week ago that Lee can get moved at all. This is probably just an evaporated trade asset.
It’s not quite fair to say this is a reminder of the risk of holding onto Cole Hamels. It’s kind of true, but Lee was already such a reminder when he got hurt last year, so this isn’t anything new. And Cliff Lee isn’t Cole Hamels, in large part because Cliff Lee is significantly older than Cole Hamels, so you’re talking about different risks. An interesting side effect, here, is definitely on the Hamels market. Lee was one of the Hamels alternatives. By probably removing Lee from the available and desirable pitcher pool, you drop the supply without touching demand, so now a team couldn’t call the Phillies and focus on the cheaper acquisition piece. Dave wrote a short while ago about how he might rather trade for Lee than Hamels. Now you couldn’t make the same argument.
Without Lee, the Phillies are bad, but the Phillies were going to be bad. This makes it that much more likely they finish the season with the worst record in baseball. The painful thing is that a healthy Cliff Lee is such an absolute pleasure to watch, and when he’s on the mound, he can genuinely make you forget about a team’s bigger-picture misery. Lee could’ve been one of those bright spots, before potentially moving on to a contender. That’s not totally out the window, but the odds are slim, and of maybe greater concern is whether Lee will decide to try to continue his career.
There’s some more certainty with Darvish. We know what the problem is. We know how the problem is usually fixed, and we know how long that knocks a player out. All that’s left to see is whether Darvish decides to go under the knife right away, or if he tries to manage this and go the rest-and-rehab approach. That hasn’t literally never worked, but it seldom works, and based on his quotes, Darvish sounds like he’s willing to miss a year if he needs to. Though Darvish still gets a few innings in our depth charts, I expect to shortly bump that down to 0.
This is a big deal, and it’s obvious why. Darvish is among the very best starting pitchers in baseball, and the Rangers don’t have another Darvish just hanging around, looking for a chance. It doesn’t get much more significant than going from Darvish to a sixth starter for a whole entire season, and whatever chances the Rangers had of contending in 2015, those’ve been slashed. Without Darvish, the Rangers are probably the worst team in the American League West.
And maybe they’re the worst team in the American League, period. We now have them projected for the worst record, with the worst division odds and with the worst overall playoff odds. And these depth charts still include Darvish for the equivalent of a month or so, just because we don’t know for sure that he’ll be out. Re-distribute those innings and the Rangers would look even worse. Before the Darvish news, our pages gave the Rangers just under a 9% chance at the playoffs. Right now, they have just under a 4% chance at the playoffs, and while maybe that doesn’t seem so significant, that means the odds have been cut by more than half.
PECOTA has been a little more sunny on the Rangers, but even there, they’re basically a .500 team before taking away Darvish’s full season. Maybe they’re about on the level of the Astros; maybe they’re about on the level of the Twins. The Rangers don’t have no shot, and it’s always easy to dream, but this is almost as devastating as an injury can be.
It continues a theme of miserable luck for an organization that not long ago looked like one of the game’s strongest. For sure, there have been bad decisions, as well, but no one deserves the injuries the Rangers have had to put up with, and as recently as 2013, this team won 91 games. In March 2012, Baseball America ranked the Rangers No. 1 in organizational talent. In March 2013, BA ranked them No. 3. The Rangers have just gotten worse everywhere, and two of the potential 2015 bright spots appear lost even before Opening Day. Every spring features skyrocketing hope. The Rangers’ hope has exploded on the platform.
What the Rangers certainly don’t want to do is concede 2015 even before it begins. They know a roster is bigger than one or two players, and I’m sure they’d love to see full seasons from Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo. A year ago, those players were deemed worthy of substantial commitments, and the front office will be able to squint and see a contender, even after the bombshell. Nothing is about to be dismantled.
But at the same time, the Rangers are most likely to just go ahead and see what they have. It makes very little sense for them to try to trade for Cole Hamels. Even if they could afford it, they’ll want to know what they could be adding to before they try to add. If a better team lost its ace, Hamels would be an obvious fallback, but the Rangers need to gain some clarity, and the last thing they need to do is shift focus to a short-term that looks worse by the month.
What probably happens is the Rangers soldier on, and they slowly drift out of the race. Which would make them one of few midseason sellers. Adrian Beltre almost certainly wouldn’t go anywhere, but there could be other interesting parts. Maybe Yovani Gallardo becomes available. Maybe Derek Holland even becomes available. Losing Darvish wouldn’t impact just 2015 — it would impact 2016 as well, and maybe the Rangers would go for a fuller re-tooling.
We’ll know what the Rangers have when the Rangers know what they have. The Rangers won’t know what they have until the middle of May or the middle of June. As easy as it is to wonder about Hamels now, it’s an even easier rumor to dismiss. There might be no salvaging this. Losing a pitcher like Yu Darvish can change a whole organization’s plan.
On paper, there are teams that benefit from the Darvish injury, and from the Lee injury. That’s just the truth of the matter. Stepping back, though, these are losses for the game, just as losing Masahiro Tanaka would be a loss for the game. These are some of the game’s most talented artists, pitchers capable of transcending the standings when they go to work, and all this breeds is pessimism and dejection. Dejection over what’s been lost; pessimism over what is sure to be lost, down the road. On the one hand, you want to celebrate the pitchers whose arms haven’t caved in. On the other hand, these stories just make ever louder the ticking of each pitcher’s clock.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
If losing a single player, even one of Yu Darvish’s abilities, can affect an organization’s plans so drastically, then it wasn’t a very good plan in the first place.
Agreed. Even in the worst case scenario of replacing Darvish with a replacement level pitcher, the Rangers should not be in a positon of changing their entire organizational plan.
The Rangers’ current predicament shows that they should have been rebuilding by now rather than throwing money at Fielder and Choo.
Ah…hindsight. The easiest vantage from which to make decisions.
The Rangers should have rebuilt after winning 91 games in 2013!
Well, honestly, why not? The A’s won 88 games last year, and they clearly retooled (or rebuilt, if you prefer) for this year. They’re currently projected to win 83 games, a fairly mild drop off from last season. And considering the level of club control they’ve got over some of the players they’ve brought in, I’d guess they’re in a much better position to compete for the long-term than the Rangers, Tigers, or Phillies.
Had Oakland not made the moves they did, we’d eventually be talking about them in the same light as those three teams, given a year or two.
No, they shouldn’t have rebuilt — but that doesn’t mean the Choo and Fielder acquisitions weren’t terrible. And really, that was consensus at the time, not just in hindsight.
Exactly….there’s a healthy middle ground between a complete rebuild and acquiring Fielder and Choo for top dollar.
Think of the Rangers’ projected roster immediately after they signed Choo. The eleven most important position players were Beltre, Andrus, Choo, Rios, Fielder, Profar, Martin, Moreland, Soto, Arencibia, and Choice. ZiPS projected about 23 WAR for that group. They actually combined for 6.7 WAR. The eleven most important pitchers were Darvish, Holland, Perez, Lewis, Harrison, Ogando, Feliz, Scheppers, Ross, Cotts, and Soria. ZiPS projected about 19 WAR for that group. They actually combined for 11 fWAR, or 3.2 bWAR, if that’s more your style.
But sure. Daniels and company totally should have foreseen a storm of injuries and significant letdowns from certain key components ahead of time instead of spending money to make a contending team better. They absolutely should have anticipated that the entire team would underperform by 20-30 wins. They totally should have sold all their short-term assets (Rios, Cotts, and a not-quite-right Soria) in order to gain multiple years of control of guys like Michael Choice. They might have even gotten a whole Leury Garcia for Rios!
No, they really should have sold Profar to the Mets in exchange for literally anyone with a functional throwing arm, kept Kinsler and spent the Fielder money on Jose Abreu, anticipated that Shin-Soo Choo would bring about the same ROI that Chan-Ho Park did and instead paid Cruz enough to stick around for another year (knowing full well he’d be worth an extension after 2014), outfitted every residence in Surprise with brand new TempurPedic mattresses, and built a time machine to go back and save Mike Olt from that concussion in winter ball that likely ruined his career, stopping the “Garza, Texas Ranger” era before it even started.
But of course now that Darvish might miss the season, the entire organizational approach has changed from “ride it out until July, hope for the best, but be prepared to trade Gallardo and maybe Beltre and possibly the entire bullpen” to “ride it out until July, hope for the best, and then probably trade Gallardo and maybe Beltre and possibly the entire bullpen.” For shame.
Well they didn’t even try to invent a time machine. I mean, come on!
Not that hard, really…
The irony is that the decision by the Rangers to NOT rebuild (and therefore trade Kinsler for Fielder and sign Choo) has amplified the need to NOW rebuild. I guess it always kind of works out like that, but this has been an unwise (Fielder and Choo) unfortunate (injuries) and quick (2014) turn of events…
Why didn’t the Rangers sign Lester or Scherzer?
Top-of-the-rotation talent is what the Rangers need. They are set up well for the next several years with their lineup and the position talent on their farm.
Where is their money? The Rangers can afford to run their payroll up to that tax threshold. That’s enough for two elite starters.
Maybe John Middleton owns them as well?
There are ways to find out! Just Highlight and Google , of course.
I think this absolutely can be compared to Hamels’ situation, in that everyone in the world knew the Phillies should have traded Lee before he got injured the first time. They weren’t going to be competitive and it was silly to hang on to him, and as a result they missed a terrific opportunity to begin the rebuilding process with some genuine prospects. Now they’re staring at a similar situation with Hamels and every month they don’t trade him it gets scarier, regardless of his health’s track record this far.
Cliff Lee has been traded three times for eleven “prospects”.
They all STINK.
The Phillies already traded Cliff Lee. They got nothing for him, just like the other two teams that traded him for prospects.
The Phillies BOYCOTT the open markets so money cut from the payroll is just more money going into John Middleton’s bank account.
Where are the articles about the Phillies now eighteen year war on Scott Boras?
Where are the articles about the Phillies 34 year long boycott of the open markets?
Nothing but old men on short contracts. All the real talent has to come for FREE in the MLB Plantation Slave Auction held every June.
Didnt the Indians get Carrasco for Lee?
Yes, but it took several years until Carrasco finally got it. He took quite a few lumps in between. He also had TJ surgery and got into scrapes. Not the easiest guy to handle and he has yet to show very much. He’s in the rotation and we’ll see how he does this year.
So in addition to being dishonest, you’re going to pretend that trading established players for prospects never works out, and that teams should never do that…. or something? There are two reasons nobody’s listening to what you have to say. One is what you’re saying. The other is how you’re saying it. Work on improving both, and then try again.
“So in addition to being dishonest, you’re going to pretend that trading established players for prospects never works out”
I’ve never written that.
The Cubs scored big by getting Addison Russell from the idiot Billy Beane. Russell is the kind of prospect that the Phillies need several of.
The issue is that no team will trade the Phillies prospects like Addison Russell and everyone on this board loudly stomps their feet and screams that trading even one prospect as good as Addison Russell to the Phillies would be an outrage.
The Phillies don’t need any of the bogus prospects being offered by MLB teams for Hamels or being advocated as an acceptable return by the wonderfully humane tempered folks who inhabit Fangraphs.
Dude, your act is getting old. Maybe you should complain about Bill Belichick instead. Nobody gets sick of that.
P. S. I am not a crackpot.
Also I’m pretty sure John Powers Middleton kicked his puppy at some point.
Highlight and Google JOHN POWERS MIDDLETON KICKING LABRADOODLES WITH HIS FANCY WINGTIPS WHICH HE BOUGHT WITH BLOOD MONEY FROM THE DAISY HILL PUPPY FARM
God I’m tired of Free_AEC’s bullshit.
Lot of happy hitters. I will say this, if Tanaka goes down as well teams will shy away from Japanese pitchers. Daisuke, Darvish and Tanaka all with elbow injuries sort of dispels the invincible arm theory in the land of the rising sun. Those early years of abuse may take their toll after all.
Looking at the AL East in particular (not that any of these 3 are in the AL East), this is the weakest I have seen it in terms of dominant SP’ers (esp LHP’ers) in a long time, especially if as expected Pineda and Tanaka break down. Might be enough to boost offense
The boom in UCL injuries does seem to coincide with HGH testing though. Might be coincidence, might not
Er, unless you’ve been living under a rock, Japanese pitchers have been considered injury risks for years if not decades.
Hideki Irabu never had serious elbow issues. He had other issues, poor guy, but never went under the knife. Same with Hideo Nomo. As seen in last years offseason, many US college pitchers need to go under the knife too. We don’t have enough evidence yet to say that Japanese pitchers are more likely to break down than US College pitchers.
I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that HGH helps players come back more quickly from injury. It doesn’t seem to far fetched to believe that it may help prevent injuries. I don’t see any way to properly test this theory and even if verified it would just open a whole new can of worms. Is it ethical for a pitcher to artificially enhance himself if such enhancement can be proven to prevent injury? I’d have a hard time coming down hard on either side.
It also coincides with an increase in the fourth digit of the year! Might be coincidence, might not
False equivalence. The date has nothing to do with the physiology of a human being, whereas HGH does.
Obviously. My point is simply that he has no more evidence for his case than any accusatory theory you can throw at a group of people.
I wonder if the frequency of injuries isn’t going up and instead they are just occurring later after a player develops because of better medical knowledge. Instead of a player getting hurt and washing out before he matters his career is extended long enough by improved knowledge for him to be noticed after the injury opposed to before a breakout when it wouldn’t be news.
I used the Darvish injury to buy low in my dynasty league.
In all likelihood I’m not competing this year, so I traded Drew Smyly, Michael Saunders, and Hector Rondon for him.
I might have overpaid a bit, but I won’t get near that good a price when he’s healthy.
Is it just me or is everyone glossing over the bigger issue, that of the lament at the end of this article, “Stepping back, though, these are losses for the game, just as losing Masahiro Tanaka would be a loss for the game. These are some of the game’s most talented artists, pitchers capable of transcending the standings when they go to work, and all this breeds is pessimism and dejection.”
What it really amounts to is how barbaric the health care industry still is even in the year 2015, with supposed cures. The whole industry is SLOW, REACTIVE, doesn’t spend much on PREVENTION, and even after what are considered to be deep studies on this topic, truly don’t know why it continues to happen (I oughta know I worked in it for years firsthand). Undergoing Tommy John, for UCL issues is a BIG DEAL. MLB, Flesig and Andrews come out with PITCH SMART on MLB.com and you read through what experts contend are the reasons for UCL surgery, and what you really find out is that they just don’t know for sure. Companies come out with the technology like MOTUS’ mSleeve, and they still don’t know definitively why this continues to happen, in what seems to be more often at younger ages. You can have supposed perfect mechanics like Matt Harvey and it doesn’t matter (btw my idea of perfect mechanics is Jon Lester and David Price and no one else in MLB). This particular injury robs everyone involved, including fans of the joy of watching someone at an elite level practice and display the mastery of their craft. The treatment for this injury might as well be like treatments for cancer, barbaric, sometimes worse than the injury or disease itself, and there are no guarantees, it doesn’t always take. Every time I hear about a young gun like Jose Fernandez go down, I just get so disgusted. The medical community should be able to pin this down to a T. The wishy washy stuff, like when the medical community came out with, “eggs are bad for you” no wait, they are good for you, no wait…they may be bad for you. I don’t understand may, might, could. I understand I know, I will, I can. My disgust has hit new levels.
What?
Everyone’s a crusader.
You don’t believe these multi billion dollar organizations aren’t spending money on ways to prevent injuries? I understand your frustration, but this isn’t a healthcare problem or a funding problem. These guys are pushing the limits of what the human body is capable of. It’s very hard to keep them from breaking down. I do know one way to prevent most of these injuries. Tell pitchers to not throw more than 70mph and to stop throwing breaking pitches. Baseball would suck if this happened, so I guess we need to accept that we will continue to have injuries like this.
The other sad part, other than fans not getting to see these great pitchers, is that many of these injuries are from repetitive stress starting when the pitchers are just kids.
Great article. And yes, watching Cliff Lee pitch is a marvel. A true artist. I hope we get more time with him before all is said and done.
We all hate injuries. The clubs do the best they can, which is much better than it used to be. Keep praying for the health of your favorites.