Not really. If anything it's the opposite case that people are viewing Darvish solely through a 2020 lens and not really taking into account a larger swath of his recent history. If you go back and look at 2018 through present day he has pitched 53 starts and 305.1 innings with a 3.63/3.81 ERA/FIP. I literally said I thought he'd be a mid 3 ERA guy. I think you can fairly argue he's probably more on the lower side of 3.5 than 3.63 but my point is more I think he's closer to 3.5 than 3.
If you look at Davies over that same time frame, he's pitched 58 starts of 302.1 innings with a 3.81/4.39 ERA/FIP. In other words, over basically the same amount of starts/innings, the two are separated by .17 in actual ERA. FIP sees the gap a bit bigger at around .57 but FIP is always going to like a high k rate pitcher than Davies and for what it's worth Davies has out pitched his FIP for his career by about 1/3 a run.
Now I'm solely having this conversation on the above because I think it's really all I need to prove my point. However, you can strongly make the case that Davies will be better than the age 25-27 version of himself going forward as he adjusts to the league where as Darvish at age 34 is going to start to slow down.
Point here is there's a lot of angles you can come at this from. But if you use actual observed data from 2018 through the present they aren't really different. So, in order to viably make that claim you have to more heavily weight Darvish's 2020 performance rather than 2018 and 2019. And if you're going to do that, you have to reconcile the fact he posted a 8.8% HR/FB compared to 17.5%/22.8% in 2019/20 and his career rate is also higher at 13.7%. You also have to reconcile the fact that from the little data we have his HR/FB is 20.0% in 2021.
Unsurprisingly, when Darvish gives up home runs he's not been good. And there's lots of reason to believe that lowered home run rate in 2020 was a fluke. If that's the case then you can't expect similar results and as I pointed out above, if he's closer to his last 53 starts rather than his last years worth the difference between him and davies last 58 starts is insignificant
It is a pointless argument.
Darvish had 3 years of control tied to him. Davies 1 year of control. Value wise you were selling the #2 in the cy-young at that time. Then you add Caratini to the deal.
So Darvish= Davies + 1 grade 50 prospect + 1 grade 45 prospect.
Caratini = 2 grade 45 prospects.
Your argument is Darvish is equal to Davies so the 2 prospects bought the 2 years of control in value?
That is a great argument from the Padres point of view to get that return.
I see it simply as Tom wanted to lower payroll. Jed couldn't trade Heyward so he traded the guy that he could and took far less that market value.
Value is at that moment. Bauer got paid off of the moment. Not over a time frame issue. Sure you can look over a time frame and see IP avg a d injury trends but you pay the current value not last year's value.
So if Bauer gets 34 M and Yu is getting paid 22 it seems like a pretty decent price tag for the Padres and they are not locked into the deal too long.
I was expecting Ryan Weather's as a center piece. Cubs needed pitching. He is a 55 grade prospect.
That should have been in reach for Jed. But no he filled up more on what he already had because that is all that he knows. This was about dropping payroll pure and simple.
Don't try to make this argument into anything else.
If you want to say Davies might end up a 4.00 ERA pitcher that is fine.
Darvish ends up at 3.50 that is fine.
It changes nothing in value at the point of the sale.
