MLB trade rumor grade: Yu Darvish to the Dodgers?

The trade deadline is nine days away, so trade rumors are all over the place. Some rumors are good! Some are ... not so good. We’re here to tell you the difference whenever one that sounds intriguing surfaces.

Word is that the Dodgers, who lead the majors in wins, are thinking about trading for the Rangers’ ace Yu Darvish. Texas is scouting Dodgers prospects just in case, according to Evan Grant, and Jon Morosi tweeted that Dodgers’ scouts were in attendance for Darvish’s start on Friday night in St. Petersburg.

Knowing all that, let’s break this down and figure out how likely and believable a Darvish/Dodgers deal actually is.

Darvish is going to be a rental, as he’s a free agent heading into this winter. However, he’s also the only starter on the trade market who is going to strike out 12 batters over eight innings against a potential playoff contender on the reg. So even though whoever gets him will be doing so for just a few months, those are going to be months of starts that matter and maybe make more of a difference than any other player at the deadline can.

TL;DR: The Rangers are going to get prospects for Darvish. Not as many as the A’s might get for Sonny Gray, considering Gray has team control on his side while Darvish does not, but there might not be any other starter besides Gray dealt this month who can bring back what Darvish will.

The Rangers can always attempt to re-sign Darvish this winter even if he’s traded, just like they can attempt to re-sign him if they instead hold on to him and finish five or six or seven or however many games out of a postseason spot. So why not try to pick up a couple of prospects who can help improve the club in the future in the process?

The big question is whether the Rangers will even deal Darvish: It was reiterated by a number of reporters on Friday and was even the subject of our Say Hey, Baseball column as well. But the Rangers aren’t dealing Darvish unless they believe that, on or around July 31, attempting to make the postseason will be more trouble than it’s worth. They’re gauging his value now to determine the answer to that question, and how they play between now and July 31 is also a factor.

The Dodgers have Clayton Kershaw and a rotation made up of guys who are doing their best impression of him over the past month-and-a-half. Barring an enormous collapse, the NL West belongs to Los Angeles yet again (they’re 9 1/2 games up as of this writing even after dropping two in a row), but that doesn’t mean they should just sit and wait for October to come.

Rich Hill is great but also permanently a candidate for injury. Hyun-Jin Ryu is in the same situation, except he hasn’t pitched as well as Hill. Kenta Maeda hasn’t looked as good this year as he did a season ago, and as incredible as Alex Wood has been — he didn’t suffer his first loss of the season until Friday against the Braves, and that loss raised his ERA to 2.17 — he’s still Alex Wood.

Wood has clearly made some changes that are working for him, but we’re also about 90 innings into that whereas there are 500 innings of him being good but not this behind him. Speaking of innings, he’s averaging 5-2/3 per start — not exactly ace material, even if the ERA is saying otherwise.

The point isn’t to belittle the Dodgers’ rotation, especially not when they are leading the league in victories and all that. At the right cost, though, they could use a Yu Darvish to pair with Clayton Kershaw: The Dodgers have won the NL West the last four years and haven’t gotten past Game 6 of the NLCS in that time. They’ve made the postseason 10 times in the wild card era, and Game 6 of the NLCS is the furthest they’ve gotten in any of those attempts.

Their last World Series championship was in 1988, or, to put that another, more depressing way, their last World Series championship came when Clayton Kershaw was seven months old. Oh, and none of Cody Bellinger or Joc Pederson or Corey Seager or Alex Wood or Yasiel Puig nor any prospects the Dodgers could deal for Darvish was even born yet.

That’s not to say that the Dodgers are going to give everything they have just to get Darvish, but they might be a teensy bit more motivated since the previous plan of hoping Kershaw could carry them in the playoffs only works until Kershaw no longer can. Pairing Kershaw up with Darvish takes the pressure off needing Hill and Ryu and Brandon McCarthy to all stay healthy, for Maeda to return to 2016 form, and for Wood to keep doing what he’s doing.

The flip side to all this is that Darvish won’t be cheap, and the Dodgers tend to dislike trading any major prospects for a rental. But with so much youth already on the roster both now and for years to come and the Dodgers the possible top team in the entire game, maybe they believe the time to splurge is now.

Despite how much sense it makes for both teams, there are just two not-so-tiny problems here that make it difficult to grade this rumor above a C-. The Dodgers have a long history of vocally window shopping for major starters and then deciding they’ve already got enough stuff piling up at Dodger Stadium.

There’s a base of healthy skepticism that’s now inherent to any related rumor because of that trend. The Rangers also haven’t decided if they’re going to trade Darvish at all. So unless a team blows them away, they might just hold on to him then try their luck with negotiating a new deal or with picking up compensation for losing him.

Given where we are with these two teams and how things could change, the grade absolutely has the possibility to go way up a week from now. That’s rarely the Dodgers’ game when it comes to a huge in-season add, however, so for now, mediocrity abounds.

[Update, 7/24]: Clayton Kershaw exited Sunday’s game early with lower back tightness and is expected to land on the disabled list. Let’s bump this rumor grade up to a C+ , but no higher just yet, as the Dodgers are still in a good enough position that they can rest Kershaw until right before the postseason if they have to.