When the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Yu Darvish just minutes prior to the non-waiver trade deadline in 2017, it marked a second consecutive year president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman successfully landed the summer’s most coveted rental starting pitcher on the market.
He previously traded Rich Hill from the Oakland Athletics in 2016, who went on to re-sign with the organization for three years during the early stages of the following offseason. Darvish, though, brought with him a more impressive résumé when he arrived to Los Angeles.
A four-time All-Star, the right-hander had solidified himself as one of the game’s most dominant pitchers and helped lead the Texas Rangers to a pair of postseason appearances during his time with the organization.
Darvish recently reflected on his brief three-month stint with the Dodgers and believes being traded to the organization helped rejuvenate his passion for pitching, via Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times:
“Looking back on my life — I’m 33 now — those three months were the three most important months of my life,” he said. “Really, I only feel appreciation. I’m really not saying that just because you’re from Los Angeles. I tell this to everyone.
“The Rangers were an old-school organization,” Darvish said. “They had a lot of rules. I really didn’t like that. But I came to the Dodgers and was told I could do what I wanted. I felt a lot more relaxed. It made me love baseball more. I felt a greater appreciation for the concept of a team.”
Despite all of the accolades and success, Darvish was traded to the Dodgers while mired in arguably the worst stretch of his career. In 22 starts leading up to the trade, he pitched to a then-career high 4.01 ERA, 3.99 FIP and 1.17 WHIP over 137 innings.
Darvish would eventually bounce back and immediately impressed over his first few starts with the Dodgers, looking like the previous version of himself. He most notably tossed seven shutout innings against the New York Mets in his team debut.
The first two months of Darvish’s stint with the Dodgers were relatively smooth, as he concluded the regular season on a positive note and came up big in his start against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2017 National League Division Series.
However, Darvish struggled mightily in two World Series outings against the Houston Astros and wound up departing the organization the following offseason after signing a lucrative six-year contract with the Chicago Cubs.
The 32-year-old recently returned to Dodger Stadium to face his former team and enjoyed what was arguably his finest outing of the season to date, yielding just one run over seven innings pitched. In the wake of his excellent results, Darvish believes he can finally move forward from his disappointing showing in the World Series.
