Couple points, some of your arguments are reasonable. I won't focus on Lester and Hendricks that much. But I will say that Lester and Hendricks finished 2 and 3 in Cy Young voting. So I'm definitely going to take their 2016 versions.
Listen, if Darvish comes out in 2019 and returns to his old self, great. However, I'm not going to bank on it. My attitude toward Darvish "I will believe it when I see it." There is no reason to anticipate greatness from him. Especially since he's a mental midget who thinks "Cubs fans hate him."
But even if he was 100% healthy, you'd have to be nuts to take him over 2016 Jake. I can't even believe that you'd take Darvish. Jake was totally lights out in the 2016 playoffs. There was some regular season dropoff from 2015 but that was one of the most dominating pitching seasons in MLB history, so that was to be expected.
Again, you're sort of making a different argument. You're focused on depth while I'm focused on the Top 3 because the Top 3 is what's going to win you a World Series.
You're sort of missing my point with regard to Lester/Hendricks. It's fine to say knowing the results that they wont duplicate those results but that's sort of a disingenuous point because you already know the results in one case and we're speculating on the potential results in the other. The point I would make is going into 2016 before we knew the results what would be your feelings for Lester/Hendricks vs going into 2019? 2015 Lester had a 3.34 ERA. 2018 Lester had a 3.32 ERA. His k/bb rates were better in 2015 which is why I said he's better going into 2016 but again I'm not sure there's that much difference. In terms of Hendricks, he had a 3.95 ERA in 2015 and a 3.44 ERA in 2018. In my eyes, I think you could say whatever you've lost from Lester from 2016 you likely gained in Hendricks as he enters his prime. As I said before, I would be surprised if statistically they were the same in 2019 as they were in 2016. But that has less to do with them as pitchers and more to do with the fact the 2016 cubs defense if I'm not mistaken was one of the best statistically ever or at the very least since they started tracking defensive metrics.
As for Darvish, like I said before I'm not going to debate health. He either will be or he wont. It's not really an interesting point to debate. However, I will debate taking Davirsh. Again stipulating that Darvish pitches like his career numbers I'd rather have him than Arrieta. Here's why... when you're evaluating pitchers from a statistics stand point you're largely concerned with 2 things, namely k rate and walk rate. The reason for this is balls in play is usually .300 over a long enough time span for most hitters/pitchers. So, that means the things a pitcher can control is how many guys he strikes out and how many guys he walks. HR/FB also matters as HR's disproportionally effect ERA. Anyways, Darvish's 11.04 career K/9 isn't just good, the only starter since he debuted in 2012 with a higher k/9 is Max Scherzer at 11.10. So, his stuff is elite of elite. If we were talking about 2015 Arrieta I think there's more of debate to be had here because his 9.28/1.89 k/bb per 9 rate is better than his 2016 8.67/3.47. In particular, the 1.89 walk rate in 2015 really set him apart. However, his 2016 walk rate nearly doubled. And that largely is why I'd rather have career darvish vs 2016 Arrieta. He strikes out more people with that 11.04 k/9 and he walks fewer people with that 3.38 bb/9.
Honestly, I kind of find it ironic that your concern is the top of the rotation and yet you dislike Darvish so much because there's maybe 1-2 guys in baseball that can match his stuff. And as for him being a mental midget... I'd assume you'd be good with having Chris Sale in the playoff yeah? In 25.0 IP Sale's post season ERA is 5.76. How about Kershaw? 152.0 IP 4.32 ERA. So the fact Darvish has a 5.81 ERA in 25.1 IP doesn't mean much. He's just given up too many HRs in a really short sample. I mean you're talking about a WHIP of 1.18 in the post season having given up 27 hits. The issue is 8 of the hits have been HRs. I'm sure you'll see that as a giant negative but to me that just appears to be a bad selection of data. I think if he gets 20-30 more postseason starts you'd see it level out closer to his career HR/FB rate though slightly elevated given better competition. His career HR/FB is 12.3% in the regular season. It's 25% thus far in his postseasons. That's about as obvious a case as you get for regression to the mean.
Regardless, if Darvish isn't giving up HRs he can win a pitching duel against literally anyone in baseball. And it's not like he's never thrown a good game in the postseason. 3 of his 6 starts(2012 vs BAL, 2017 vs ARI, 2017 vs cubs) he's thrown 18 IP giving up 13 hits 4 ER 1 BB 21 K's for a 2 ERA with a 10.5 k/9 and a 0.5 bb/9. 2 of his other 3 starts were vs Houston and while he was fairly terrible in those games as I said before I suspect houston was effectively cheating in those games. They said he was tipping his pitches but I honestly think they may have been using the same guy that got caught filming boston's dugout because in those two starts he threw 3.1 IP giving up 9 hits, 2 walks 0 k's and 8 ERs. Seeing someone with his lofty K numbers not even manage to strike them out once strikes me as very odd. Even in his 6th start vs TOR in 2016 where he was mediocre he threw 5 innings with 4 k's.
And as I said before, it's not like Darvish has lost the stuff that makes him interesting. His 11.03 2018 k/9 is basically identical to his career rate. His 4.73 bb/9 rate in 2018 however obviously was way elevated. However, if he were pitching through pain it could have easily thrown his mechanics out of wack. And given his comments about not wanting to disappoint fans, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he was trying to pitch through pain. Presumably he is now healthy after having the procedure that ended his 2018. If his command returns with his health he's going to be one of the best pitchers in the NL.
