Padres’ Yu Darvish can’t ‘wrap mind’ around future after shortest start of career

CHICAGO — Several circles formed in a tiny, quiet visiting clubhouse Thursday night at Wrigley Field as the Padres assessed a season cut short.

The biggest was the one that congregated around 22-year-old Jackson Merrill, the future of a team with many pieces in place next year. That group included the likes of Nick Pivetta and Gavin Sheets, all of them with a beer in hand as they chatted quietly amid the reporters shuffling between lockers.

Off to the side, a 39-year-old Yu Darvish sat next to a 33-year-old Manny Machado as pitching coach Ruben Niebla stopped by.

They are cornerstone pieces, too, but the shortest start of Darvish’s long, storied carried only sharpened the focus on an ailing right elbow that sidelined him for parts of the last three seasons and was an issue for him even after he finally joined the rotation in July.

Darvish is owed another $46 million through 2028, but in the wake of a 3-1 loss to the Cubs that ended the Padres’ season, he was in no place mentally to even begin to digest what it’s going to take for him to pitch next season.

“I mean, we just got through — we just lost, our season just ended,” Darvish said through interpreter Shingo Horie. “That’s something I’ll go into the offseason and think about. I can’t really wrap my mind around that right now.”

There’s a lot to consider.

Between seven years in Japan and 13 years in the majors, there’s more than 3,080 innings on that right arm. It’s been a decade since Darvish lost the 2015 season to Tommy John surgery. He finished this season with career worsts in ERA (5.38), strikeout rate (8.5 per nine innings) and home run rate (1.8 per nine innings).

He had to lower his arm slot just to make it through this season. Even after making it through the final 15 starts of the year, he framed the opportunity to shift into a new gear in October like this:

“Once you go into the playoffs, it’s like you don’t necessarily care if you’re going to break,” Darvish said last weekend.

Darvish didn’t break Thursday. But he did enough bending before the Padres pulled him with the bases loaded and no outs in the second inning.

He gave up a leadoff single to Michael Busch in the first inning and was helped out of the inning when Freddy Fermín threw out Nico Hoerner trying to steal second. Then Darvish gave up a leadoff single to Kyle Tucker in the second and a double to Seiya Suzuki. By the time he hit Carson Kelly with a 93 mph sinker to load the bases, plans to replace him with Jeremiah Estrada were already in motion.

“Yeah, it’s been a little bit of an uphill battle for Yu this year, starting even in the offseason into spring training and (he) was compromised,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “ … He was able to work his way and get back and then took him a while to get going again, but he’s a guy with a lot of experience in the league, and today was pretty crisp in the first … and the hit by pitch by Carson was a little bit of a red flag that maybe not as sharp.”

Pete Crow-Armstrong’s ensuing RBI single prompted Shildt to pull Darvish after 1-plus inning, his previous shortest outing on any stage. Darvish struck out one, allowed four hits and was charged with a second run when Estrada walked Dansby Swanson to begin his two-inning stint.

“It’s obviously very disappointing,” Darvish said. “I was full-go from first pitch, but things just didn’t turn our way. You know, it’s a sad thing, too, that you know this group will not all be together come next season.”

He added: “I just couldn’t command the ball the way that I wanted to in the second inning.”

Shildt visited Darvish twice that inning. The first one began with Machado and Darvish speaking quite a bit as Niebla joined the entire infield on the dirt.

“I’ve seen him for years now and the things he does for this organization, mostly for the team, to go out there and pitch,” Machado said. “Obviously, this year has been very hard for him. We see day in (and) day out, what he’s doing. I get first-hand to see it.  And sometimes you just can’t go. And he pushed through it. He figured things out. He figured a way to go out there and compete for us. I mean, I got nothing but respect. I get to see it firsthand, why he is who he is, why he has so many wins in the big leagues between here and Japan, why he’s such a king in Japan.

“This guy’s a freaking gamer and one of the best human beings that you could possibly meet. And at the end of the day, the biggest competitor that this game has. What he dealt with this year to go out there and give us an opportunity to come out here and win this game today. I mean, listen, to start off today, there was one guy I wanted on that mound … Yu Darvish. And we fell short offensively for him.”