The night before Yu Darvish threw the last rehab pitch of his painful and awkward 2018 season, I was at Wrigley Field, standing behind Jed Hoyer at a Pearl Jam concert.
While I was waking up early, and hungover, to drive to South Bend, Ind., Hoyer, then the GM and now the president of baseball operations, said he would watch Darvish’s outing from home, also likely hungover.
I’m not sure how lagging his Internet connection was, but I believe I was the one who broke the news to him via text that Cubs trainer Matt Johnson was examining Darvish in the second inning of that start. Darvish would leave the Aug. 19 game and return in 2019.
And now Hoyer should feel sick because he just traded Darvish in a deal that portends a rough 2021 season, and maybe beyond, for the Cubs.
As of this writing, Darvish is in the process of being traded to the San Diego Padres in a classic present-for-future deal. The Cubs are back in the rebuilding game. They…
