Yu Darvish agrees to extension with Padres

You spent a lot of time as a GM in that division. What the Padres are doing is unprecedented in that market, it seems. What do you make of it? Well, I think you can throw out what they've done in the past. Peter Souther's come out and said, I'm gonna spend money to make money. That's gonna be the model. I think this commitment shows even further that this is not like a window here. That window is extended a lot further down the road. And I think it's interesting to Taylor and Ron that, you know, they're not really looking at age regression models the way the rest of the industry has looked at age regression models for year. I think they're looking at it from an individual standpoint. And Darvish is a really interesting guy. He's really kind of morphed into a different pitcher than he was earlier in the year. He had his lowest whiff rate of his career this past year, but he threw more pitches in the zone at any point in time in his career. And they had some free agents at the end of this year, and they're starting rotation without a lot of young depth underneath it. So now they've got Musgroves and Darvish to kind of anchor that rotation moving forward. But Ronnie, again, you know, Darvish is like a unicorn in our industry. He is such a different pitcher than really anyone else in the game. Walk us through why. Well, he's got a parcel of pitches, and there's a lot of pitchers that have a big arsenal. But the thing about you, Darvish, is that every single one of these pitches is supreme and sublime at points. He's been in a couple different uniforms. This is a Dodger uniform. He's always had the ability to do anything he really wanted to the baseball. He can cut it, he can make it sail, he can slide it, he can curve it. He can throw any pitch from 50 miles an hour to close to 100 miles an hour. Now early in his career, you were addressing that he had a lot more swing and miss, more control now. Early in his career, he was a guy that wanted to be perfect. If he didn't make the perfect pitch, he wasn't interested in throwing another pitch down the middle. And that's why he had a lot of walks, but also a lot of strikeouts. But the way he does it now is just like a painter. So creative, like an artist. He'll set guys up for that fastball that'll throw right by him. He's a guy that can spin it as well as anyone. And listen, I don't know a lot about painting, whether it's Picasso or Pollock, but right now, Hugh Darvish is at the top of his game. And I think that's one of the reasons why they've given him this contract. They just feel, and you talked about it, that they are starting to judge on an individual level. You saw Scherzer and Verlander for the Mets, both making north of $40 million because they know they can pitch right now, or the Mets know they can pitch right now. Do they know that Darvish should be able to pitch until he's 42? They don't know for sure, but they feel the information they have is trending. His pitch trending is better for him as he gets older. So this is a great graphic we just showed, right, of him painting. He's certainly been able to paint the zone, especially last season, but it's going to change this year a little bit with the pitch clock, because this is a guy who takes his time out there on the mound. And so from your perspective as a pitcher, just what will that adjustment be like? Well, to put it nicely, he was really contemplative before he would throw a pitch, deliberate. But that has changed, really. After he left the Cubs, I think he's gotten much better at getting rid of the ball quicker. I think the pitch calm really helps him kind of getting what he wants to throw in those six or seven pitches that he has. And I think that he can only be better. If he increases his tempo, that means his feel's going to be better. His feel on those seven pitches is going to be better. His defense is going to be better. All of those things, the pitch clock, which he might reluctantly have to abide by, might make him a better pitcher. Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is going to be for Nola behind the plate. I mean, he's got seven pitches. He's going to have to know what he wants to throw as soon as he throws the one previous to that to give him, Taylor, as much time on the mound to process that, to be able to execute a pitch. It'll be really interesting to see. It's a great point on your part. Yeah, and I want to bring up just the division as a whole, because we know the Dodgers have been the crown jewel of the NLS for quite some time. Where are the Padres now? Well, I think after last season, the Padres are legit. They are for real. And the Dodgers, not that they have taken a step back, they have not. They still have great talent, a great nucleus foundation of players. But they have, are going to miss some of the players they've lost, Justin Turner and others. So the Dodgers might not be as formidable, but how formidable do you have to be when you're winning 105 plus every year? Yeah, and believe it or not, I look at organizations over a 10-year period of time, because I think the better ones find a way to sustain themselves. I think you're going to have some years where your talent level takes a little dip before it comes back up. The Padres, for me on paper right now, have the better talent of the 26-man roster. The Dodgers still have incredible depth. They just were ranked as the number one player development system in the game. The Padres traded most of their depth to acquire the top-level talent that they have, so it's crucial that that top-level talent stays healthy through the course of the year, because the Dodgers have the depth of talent to sustain some significant losses. And they built an organization, to me, that's one of the best that the game has seen in a long time. Yeah, it's interesting. Padres certainly in that win-now mode. So we'll follow them all throughout this season.