Chicago Cubs: Making predictions for the 2019 starting rotation

Chicago Cubs: Time for Darvish to prove doubters wrong

This is no doubt the trickiest one to predict. Darvish is coming off a season where he pitched just 40 innings before getting injured. He will spend the winter rehabbing and getting back to where he needs to be. A lot of things can happen here with an injury-prone player, but let’s not forget that when he is healthy and on his game, Darvish is really good.

Again this is if all goes well.

Even if everything goes as desired, it is hard seeing him coming off injury pitching over 175-180 innings. It could even be even less and this is definitely being generous. But if he is healthy he can stike out a lot of guys and be dominant. A bold prediction here is him leading the staff in strikeouts because he is very capable of that.

Prediction: 175 IP / 3.55 ERA / 1.2 WHIP / 3.70 FIP / 65 BB / 210 K

A lot of factors can change over the course of an offseason, but it is always fun looking at early predictions. Let’s hope they all pan out as well as I’ve penned them here.