In 2022, Clevinger will return to the mound for the Padres while Darvish, Lamet, and Snell are all still under contract. (The Dodgers and Nationals are close, with Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin all just 0.1 projected WAR behind Snell.) No other team has even two pitchers in the top 15. Darvish, Dinelson Lamet (a fourth-place Cy Young finisher in 2020), and Snell rank fifth, 12th, and 15th, respectively, in 2021 projections among individual pitchers, according to the Steamer system. The new-look Padres rotation is, to use an esteemed industry term, absolutely bonkers, leading the majors in projected WAR even with Clevinger sidelined by Tommy John surgery. According to MLB researcher Sarah Langs, the Padres are the first team to acquire multiple pitchers with such recent high Cy Young finishes in the same offseason-and they did so in the span of about 24 hours. Snell won the 2018 AL Cy Young award Darvish finished second in NL voting in 2020. Fourth in strikeout rate (34.6 percent).Since the 2019 All-Star break, 80 pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings. But he’s also one of the best pitchers in baseball, having recovered from 2018 injuries and a rough early adjustment with the Cubs to return to the top tier of MLB pitchers. With three years and $59 million remaining on his contract, the 34-year-old Darvish isn’t as cheap as Snell, nor as young. If the Snell trade was part Rays’ financial shenanigans, part Padres’ effort to replace the injured Mike Clevinger in the rotation, the Darvish deal is an outright robbery. But that’s the point: The Padres are now close enough to the Dodgers to look like they’re equals. Projections aren’t sacrosanct, and margins this slim so far out from the season aren’t particularly meaningful.
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