![]() The pandemic undoubtedly affected different players differently, and each deserves at least a second full post-pandemic season for us to really say we know much about their futures. It’s way too early to say that Yeison Santana and Ismael Mena have already washed out, even after their disappointing 2021 seasons. If you start hoping for big league impact, then you’ve already started dreaming too far down the road. You hope, realistically, that two can at least become legit prospects. When you acquire four teenage prospects in a deal like that, the reality is that you already know at least two are probably never even going to progress to the upper levels of the minors. Primarily, the goal for the Cubs was to infuse the farm system with more talent. It was … probably … a great move for the Cubs. We’re a year removed now from the trade, and it’s pretty hard to argue that the combined impact of time (to “get over it”) and data (to analyze where things stand) have indeed yielded an entirely different perspective on the trade. You have to have the distance to yield to the context. Knowing in the moment of that trade that I’d likely seen him pitch for the Cubs for the last time is the kind of bummer you can’t rightly sort out in a 24 hour period. There aren’t a lot of pitchers who do it like he does, and his run from mid-2019 through the pandemic season was as good as it gets. I liked the person he was, the entertainment he provided on and off the field, and I loved watching him pitch. I was pissed that there was a clear financial component to the trade, I was pissed that the Cubs were turning 2021 into a “roll the dice in the first half” year (at best), and I was confused about the Cubs targeting such young/high-risk prospects in the deal.Īlso? Yeah, I really freaking liked Yu Darvish. I look back at my main write-ups and I can remember where I was, emotionally and intellectually, at the time. One year ago today, the Chicago Cubs traded Yu Darvish and Victor Caratini to the San Diego Padres for four very young prospects and Zach Davies.Ĭontext is important – the pandemic had crushed the sport’s finances, the Cubs were coming up on a year when they were going over the cliff in controlling their core positional group, and the farm system was pretty desperately in need of talent infusions – but I don’t want to mince words here: the reaction to the deal was overwhelmingly negative. It just makes you a passionate sports fan who also happens to be human. It doesn’t make you a hypocrite or a meatball or a fairweather fan if you go from hating something on Day Zero to respecting it on Day 150 to downright digging it on Day 365. That’s why it’s also fair to give yourself the same grace, months later, to look back and see what happened through a different lens. And if that feeling is pain or sadness or anger, that’s fine. You can try to drop all the logic bombs on yourself about the wisdom of the trade or the long-term value or whatever, but in the moment, you’re going to feel what you feel. So many players with whom we’d developed about as deep a connection as one can develop at a distance with someone you’ll never actually know. We saw it at the Trade Deadline this year when so many long-time favorites were sent out.
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