PEORIA, Ariz. — Yu Darvish is brilliant with a baseball.
With the half-dozen pitches he throws regularly and the five others he mixes in on occasion, his pitching is practically poetry. He mesmerizes from the mound.
He throws hard. He throws soft. He spins. He weaves a story with curves and changes and sweepers and sliders and splitters. He goes about it all with an air of grace and dignity.
When Darvish is good, watching him is a moving experience.
And he was so good at the end of last season and in the playoffs.
The Padres would like to experience that again. As many times as they can.
Because as transcendent as he might seem, no one knows how long Darvish, who turns 39 in August, will continue pitching.
He is signed through 2028. But he conceded one recent morning that there is no guarantee he will pitch another four seasons.
“Each year, I just focus to play baseball,” Darvish said. “If I feel like I can’t play baseball anymore, then I’m done playing.”
This isn’t to serve as any sort of actual notice. It’s just an acknowledgment that Darvish knows time bows to no one, not even the man about to become the winningest Japanese-born pitcher in history.
When the Padres signed Darvish to a six-year extension worth $108 million before the 2023 season, it was with the belief that if anyone could sustain excellence until he was 42, it was Darvish.
Those who work alongside him contend there is reason to believe he can pitch even beyond that.
“His attention to detail is probably the thing that is allowing him to pitch this late in his career,” fellow starter Michael King said. “But he’s like a freak athlete combined with that. He pays so much attention to everybody else around him, and he’s constantly learning, and then he’s in the weight room doing, like, very, very specific exercises that he knows is gonna get his body ready. And he’s done it for 14 straight years and however many more in Japan. You got a guy that’s that consistent and that focused on his craft and as good of an athlete, and now you know why he’s pitching until he’s 42 years old. … He might go longer.”
The seasons have become more arduous, though, and Darvish has a large family — seven children in all, five with his current wife, Seiko. Their youngest is 2.
“I have a lot of kids,” he said. “So I have to see what are we doing now, where are we at and balance with the baseball.”
Because there can be no doubt about Darvish’s commitment. His offseason and in-season routine is such that he does not seem to age.
“It doesn’t look like it,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said, laughing. “Not if you look at his body.”
But he is getting older, which is true of everyone. But in the parlance of professional sports, it is a softer way of suggesting he is getting old.
“I need to have time to prepare more than before,” Darvish said. “Like, 10 years ago, I didn’t do much. Like 30 minutes of stretching, but now I need 90 minutes.”
At 39, Darvish is entering his 13th major league season, not including the 2015 season lost to Tommy John surgery. He pitched seven seasons in Japan before coming to the United States.
His next victory will be his 204th between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball, the most by any Japanese-born pitcher.
Since joining the Padres in 2021, he has been a remarkable combination of excellent, resilient and absent.
His 3.79 ERA over those four seasons ranks 23rd among those who have pitched at least 550 innings in that span. His 579 innings rank 32nd, and his 100 starts are tied for 40th.
He has gone at least seven innings without allowing more than one run 18 times. That is tied with Luis Castillo for 13th most in MLB since 2021, and Castillo has made 21 more starts in that span.
In fact, Darvish has posted such a game every 5.5 starts over the past four seasons. That is more frequently than all but six pitchers with at least 80 starts in that period.
He has also pitched through elbow, hip and neck injuries and been sidelined for varying lengths of time by all three maladies (and more).
Last season, after having already spent a month on the injured list, he missed nearly two months dealing with a personal matter.
And when he came back, he was almost as good as ever. Especially by October.
After what was essentially a warm-up in his first start, in which he allowed the Tigers to score three runs in 2⅔ innings on Sept. 4, he finished the season by allowing seven runs in 22⅔ innings (2.78 ERA) over his final four starts.
And then he faced the Dodgers twice in the National League Division Series, allowing a run on three hits over seven innings in Game 2 and two runs on three hits over 6⅔ innings in Game 5. That followed a 2022 postseason in which he made four starts, allowing eight runs over 25 innings (2.88 ERA).
“At times for Yu-san, less is more,” Preller said. “And I think for us in terms of understanding, hey, the most important thing is what we saw last year when he was pitching in October. Yu Darvish in October is obviously a very talented and capable pitcher — seeing what he did in L.A. in two starts. So I think for us, it’s like understanding that, like, yeah, the World Series isn’t played in April or May. These games are important. But we’re gonna try and do everything we can … to make sure he is as prepared as he can to go perform at a high level.”
Darvish can’t think about September or October when he is on the mound in April or May. He can’t change how he pitches.
“I do that,” he said, “I get crushed.”
But he can think about the long haul now and between starts and in how he communicates with pitching coach Ruben Niebla and manager Mike Shildt. The Padres have talked about possibly limiting Darvish’s number of pitches and innings more than in past seasons.
“We’re gonna watch, we’re gonna pay attention, we’re gonna listen to him, we’re gonna watch the metrics,” Niebla said. “Most important is gonna be his strength levels and recovery.”
There are a couple reasons why Darvish is better suited to extending his career than almost any other pitcher.
“We’re going to pay close attention to it,” Niebla said. “But Yu is the one guy that you can trust on this more than anybody else. He’s so aware. Yu also has a lot of low-effort, less-stress innings (compared to) other pitchers. …. He doesn’t exert a lot of energy through his outings. So it’s not max effort. He conserves energy through the course of a game.”
Darvish joked through interpreter Shingo Horie when asked how different it might be navigating 2025, “Obviously, the age is catching up a little bit, so I might have to take a lot of medication.”
When the laughter subsided, he added, “Just kind of being refreshed, mentally and physically … throughout the season, just be cognizant of that and try to get that refreshment of the physical and the mental.”
