Yu Darvish, San Diego Padres ($18M)<\/p>\n
Corbin Burnes is the only one of the 34 highest-salaried pitchers expected to miss at least half of next season, but you’ve probably surmised from that oddly specific number that the 35th-highest salaried pitcher is on the shelf. That would be Darvish, who underwent a UCL brace surgery in October and will miss all of 2026. He is signed through 2028, but whether the 39-year-old will return in 2027 is up in the air.<\/p>\n
Eduardo Rodriguez, Arizona Diamondbacks ($20M)<\/p>\n
E-Rod missed most of 2024 and had an ERA north of 5.00 for the 10 starts he was able to make. He was mostly healthy in 2025, but equally ineffective to the tune of a 5.02 ERA and 1.54 WHIP. Arizona was overly influenced by his great run through 2023, stuck with two more years of what they had hoped might be their ace.<\/p>\n
Taijuan Walker, Philadelphia Phillies ($18M)<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Berr\u00edos, Toronto Blue Jays ($18.714M)<\/p>\n
Where do either of these guys fit in their respective rotations?<\/p>\n
Walker will probably start out in the Phillies rotation, but he’s the odd man out once Zack Wheeler is healthy and once top prospect Andrew Painter makes his mark. Walker will probably be in a long-relief role by Memorial Day. And while Dylan Cease, Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber and Trey Yesavage figure to lock down four of Toronto’s spots, Berr\u00edos will likely need to battle Eric Lauer, Cody Ponce and Bowden Francis for the fifth one.<\/p>\n
Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals ($35M)<\/p>\n
If we mentioned Anthony Rendon in the third base section, we better also mention Strasburg here. He retired long ago, but his retained salary still counts at $35M against the Nationals’ luxury tax payroll. Even so, they’re projected at more than $100M below the competitive balance tax threshold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yu Darvish, San Diego Padres ($18M) Corbin Burnes is the only one of the 34 highest-salaried pitchers expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-425956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}