San Diego Padres‘ starter Yu Darvish announced his retirement from Major League Baseball on Saturday. The 39-year-old from Habikino, Japan, has called it quits after 13 MLB seasons with the Padres, Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs, and Los Angeles Dodgers. Darvish has three years and $43 million left on his current $108 million deal that he signed before 2023.
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Over those 13 seasons, Darvish is a five-time All-Star with a career ERA of 3.65 over 297 total starts. He finished second in CY Young voting twice in his career (2013, 2020). Yu Darvish carved out a really successful MLB career and is certainly one of the more notable starters from the 2010s. He should be in consideration for the Hall of Fame down the road. Heavy on Sports wishes Darvish the best in his retirement and his post-baseball ventures, which one can assume may involve giving back or helping with Japanese ball players.
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Breaking: Yu Darvish Retires from Major League Baseball
In 2025, Darvish was limited to just 15 starts due to internal brace surgery on his elbow and posted an ERA of 5.38 in 72 innings. In 2024, Darvish made just 16 starts, also due to injury. The injury from 2025 would have caused Yu Darvish to miss all of 2026, and even possibly some of 2027, so Darvish decided he did not want to have to go through all that rehab to get back to the mound as he’s approaching 40 years old.
Sean M. Haffey/Getty ImagesYu Darvish pitched like an ace for the Padres on Friday night against the Dodgers.
It’s important to note, though, that the last two seasons of Darvish’s career are not emblematic of his entire time with the Padres. In 651 innings with San Diego, Darvish recorded a 3.97 ERA, 683 strikeouts, 3.88 FIP, and 44 pitcher wins.
Yu Darvish’s best numbers came with the Texas Rangers, who helped the team get to the 2013 World Series. That 2013 campaign was the best season of Darvish’s career. He made 32 starts, posted an ERA of 2.83 over 200+ innings, and struck out a league-best 277 batters. Darvish had four seasons of 200+ strikeouts.
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Yu Darvish’s Other Stops Along His Career
Yu Darvish played with four MLB organizations, and the other two, aside from the Rangers and Padres, were the Dodgers and Cubs.
In 2017, the Dodgers pulled off a blockbuster trade at the trade deadline for Yu Darvish, and then ended up advancing to the World Series because of it. Darvish had been a catalyst of Los Angeles’ Fall Classic run, but he may be more remembered among Dodgers fans for his poor game seven performance against the Astros that season.
He had also been a Chicago Cub for three seasons, and that included one of his “top-2” finishes in the CY Young voting, during the 2020 shortened COVID season.
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