The night before Yu Darvish gave his last rehab speech for his painful and weird 2018 season, I was at Wrigley Field, behind Jed Hoyer at a Pearl Jam show.
As I woke up early and was hung over to drive to South Bend, Indiana, Hoyer, then the GM and now the president of baseball operations, said he would watch Darvish out of the house, probably with a hangover.
I’m not sure how slow his Internet connection was, but I believe it was me who broke the news to him by text message that Cubs coach Matt Johnson was examining Darvish in the second round of that start. Darvish would leave the August 19 game and return in 2019.
And now Hoyer must feel bad because he just negotiated Darvish on a deal that foreshadows a tough 2021 season, and perhaps more, for the Cubs.
At the time of writing, Darvish is in the process of negotiating with the San Diego Padres on a classic business for the future. The Cubs are back in the game of reconstruction. They…