Where will Yu Darvish sign?

Would you like to ignore a single game? It’s easy to do. The Dodgers did it a long time ago in a baseball galaxy far, far away, and it looked like the greatest decision they could have made. The day before the Dodgers acquired Yu Darvish from the Rangers, he gave up 10 runs in 3⅔ innings. His team lost 22-10, and his ERA was over 4.00 for just the second time since 2012. The first time was after Opening Day, and it took one start to get it back under.

The Dodgers looked at that start and thought, “Eh. He’s still Yu Darvish.”

They were right. Darvish had a pair of five-run outings for the Dodgers, but he was solid for the most part. He dazzled with 10 strikeouts and just four baserunners allowed in his Dodgers debut, and he finished the regular season by allowing just two hits in just seven innings. In his first two postseason starts, he allowed just two runs, striking out 14 and walking just one. He combined for just 155 pitches in those starts, marrying effectiveness and efficiency, and he was as rested as a starting pitcher could hope to be entering the World Series.

Would you like to ignore two games, then? It should be easy to do. But, buddy, it’s not gonna be easy this time.

Darvish had one of the worst World Series any single starting pitcher has ever had, losing two out of the Dodgers’ four losses in a seven-game series, and doing it so quickly and emphatically that they never had a chance. He faced 22 batters and didn’t strike out a single one. He picked up four swinging strikes combined in his two World Series starts; the last time he got four swinging strikes in a single start was July 23, 2014. His slider was flat. His command was abominable.

What you’ll need to do, then, is guarantee a $100 million contract while saying, “Eh. He’s still Yu Darvish.”

I suppose the first step is figuring out what that means. What should a team expect from Darvish, even if they ignore the public pantsing of the World Series? He’ll be 31. He’s a Tommy John veteran who hasn’t thrown more than 200 innings since 2013. His ERA has gone up each of the last three seasons, and so has his FIP. His strikeout rate was the worst of his career, and so was his home run rate.

If you want cold, hard facts, here are his Marcel projections, which use nothing but stats from the last three seasons and tweaked to account for his age: 163 IP, 3.98 ERA, 3.0 BB/9, 10.0 K/9, 23 HR allowed. He’d be something like Aaron Nola this year, in other words, which isn’t a bad thing. Except he’d be much older and waaaaay more expensive: Jon Heyman predicted $144 million over six years, and his unnamed expert (with a history of nailing these) predicted $155 million.

Based on everything up there, I’ll take the under. But never underestimate an owner’s ability to remember the GIF. You know, the GIF.

If the owner doesn’t know about the GIF, he knows about it in spirit. There’s a mythical quality to the pure stuff Darvish has. And if you assume the World Series was just a blip (I do!), you’re gonna want a heaping bowl of that stuff every fifth day, depending on the price.

Depending on the price.

Which teams can pay that price?

The ideal team would be the Mariners, who could then turn to Shohei Ohtani and whisper, “Psssssst, we now employ your childhood idol.” This would also fit what the Mariners need, because they’re still the reverse image of the team they were in the early part of the decade, struggling to prevent runs while scoring plenty.

I’m not entirely sure the Mariners would be the right fit, though. With Darvish under contract, they would have at least $80 million in guaranteed payroll for every season through 2021. They can afford it, sure, but when you consider that at least some of that money will be going to players who aren’t worth it (looking at you, 38-year-old Robinson Cano), it would still be a burden to overcome. I’m not sure Darvish is the dominant pitcher who would make teams plug their nose and make that commitment.

No, I’m thinking the ideal team is a team with ...

It’d be cool if, say, the Phillies decided to act like a big-market team again, but they know that Darvish’s biggest contributions are likely going to come in 2018, when they might be lost on them. It would also be cool if this is finally the year that the Orioles did something, but their window might have slammed on their fingers. Or wings. Whatever.

The Yankees have a CC Sabathia-sized hole in their rotation and budget, but if there’s the slightest concern about a player wilting under pressure, even if it’s poppycock, they might look to spend elsewhere. The Red Sox and Nationals have other concerns, so if we’re looking for one of the big-market bullies, there’s just one left in play: The Cubs, who have just $43 million in committed dollars in 2020. A lot of that will be spoken for in extensions and arbitration awards for players like Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, and Javier Baez, but they’re not drowning in bad deals.

Ah, but they still have to manage the payroll somewhat cautiously. They will be committing huge dollars to their young stars, and a $20 million annual salary to someone like Darvish would be a burden.

The contending teams with almost no committed dollars are the ones likeliest to overlook all of those red flags up there. That makes it something of a battle between the Twins and the Brewers to see which small-market team is most confident they can brush off a bad deal. The Brewers owe just $18.5 million in guaranteed money in 2020. The Twins owe just $500,000, which is the buyout of Byung-ho Park’s contract. They usually aren’t the team that can stack bad contract after bad contract, but any team can work around one.

The Twins have a surprisingly formidable lineup, a lot of money to spend, the momentum of a postseason appearance pushing them along, and an acute need in the rotation. They might prefer to mess around with pitchers like Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb. But they might see this as their chance to sit at the $100 blackjack table.

Twins, 5 years, $120 million. I’m just not seeing those totals that Heyman and his accomplice predicted, not for a 31-year-old whose last moments in the spotlight ended on such a downer. Yu Darvish dropped the mic in his final start, but it landed on his foot, which caused him to hop around, screaming, “Ow! Ow! Ow! That microphone was heavy!” and fall backward out of a window into the back of a moving garbage truck that was on fire and heading straight for the ocean.

But he’s probably still Yu Darvish.

Then it will be the Twins’ turn to remind Ohtani that he collected Yu Darvish action figures. That might be the plan, you know. And considering where the Twins are in the success cycle, it’s a pretty danged good one.