The agreement is taking place, and the names are inside. The Chicago Cubs traded Yu Darvish and Victor Caratini to the San Diego Padres for a big prospect package, and pitcher Zach Davies.
This is not the package you were thinking of when these rumors started this morning:
Sources confirmed to @dennistlin, @PJ_Mooney and I that the full deal is that Yu Darvish and Victor Caratini go to the Padres and the Cubs and receive Zach Davies and the prospects Reginald Preciado, Owen Caissie, Yeison Santana, Ismael Mena
– Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) 29 December 2020
Davies’ inclusion is more about salary and wanting to move a pitcher from one team to another, even though I’m not ignore him, he does not get much focus in terms of what the trade was ‘for’.
Make no mistake with the nature of the trade: it is a purely “sell” industry. It moves a player with a substantial contract into a deal to get as much young value as possible (while downloading the contract). In that regard, I just did not see it coming for the Cubs before an otherwise lucrative year in 2021, and when you would also be able to restore your roster for 2022 and beyond. That does not mean that the Cubs do not want to do it any other way – I do not think they are going to tank for years, people, but I really thought that a return on a Darvish trade in 2022 would be very clear. Absent other trades in which these prospects are involved, that definitely will not happen. These are many, many long-term pieces.
You can see the current updates here as the day unfolded. Strange, unpleasant ride. Small pieces about the prospects there as a starting point. The short version is that Preciado is a 17-year-old shortstop and a top IFA signing for 2019, Caissie is an 18-year-old fielder who was the 2nd round of the Padres this year. Santana is a 19-year-old prospect of the shortstop that tops the Padres-laden system, and Mena is a 17-year-old midfielder who was a major IFA signing in 2019.
These are good prospects on paper, and we’ll be looking into that soon. But all are teenagers, and we come from a year with almost no meaningful exploration. It is surprising to me that the Cubs sought this return. I mean, they might not have had a choice if they were dead to trade Darvish (sighs), but those are high risk and high upside types. All four of them. Here’s a big risk if you move a player as valuable as Darvish, to say nothing of Caratini.
Let me put aside the loss of Darvish and Caratini for a moment and unpack a little.
In the long run, the Cubs will have a loaded farming system by next time. If there is internal progress as we would hope (based on investments in development), there is the upcoming IFA class with Cristian Hernandez, another concept, and if there is no weakening elsewhere, this system can be stacked by the following off-season. This is good for many reasons, because you will remember well.
Theoretically, there are also more dollars available to purchase for the 2021 season, the upcoming 2022 class and also internal expansions. The Cubs already had to add another starter or two, and although Davies takes Darvish’s place in the rankings, the need still remains. At Catcher, could the Cubs add a veteran addition to link up with Contreras, could PJ Higgins or Taylor Gushue let the performances play, or maybe think Miguel Amaya could get a chance late in the year?
That said, unless those dollars are used this off-season to bring some very effective short-term pieces into a depressed market, the Cubs will be massively downgraded to 2021 (and 2022-23, actually!). There is no way around it. The rotation is terrifying at the moment. And Caratini is really good. One of the better “backups” in the game.
There will be so much more to say specifically about the departure of Darvish. About how he was injured in his first year at the Cubs, suffered from absurd pain to find out what the problem was, re-appointed himself (again) over the course of 2019 and became one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball (again) from mid-2019 until last season. Not only was he a great artist for the Cubs, but he was also a great teammate, a great guy, a fun Twitter follower and fun to watch. Losing that package in that player is going to sting.
More on the full scope of the trade later. I turn a little more.