I had a choice between going to a game on Monday or Tuesday. I picked Monday. Bad move.
That’s because Yu Darvish took the hill on Tuesday. And pitched like a man with that kind of contract should pitch. He threw 7.2 innings. Allowed just FOUR hits and one run. Walked two. Struck out seven. Even his pitch count was respectable (118), given the number of innings (7.2). A full nine inning game at an accepted number of pitches per inning comes out to be 135 for the whole game, so he’s doing OK there. I always sort of felt that Yu Darvish would do OK before he started, but one never really knows. It’s nice to see him do so well out of the gate. Come August or so, it’ll be nice to see if teams adjust to him enough and how the cat and mouse game goes and all of that.
As of now, Darvish is tied for the league lead in wins with 6 (with Derek Lowe, David Price, & James Shields). He’s actually 17th in innings pitched (with 52.0). He’s third in strikeouts with 58. Just one behind CC Sabathia, and three behind Felix Hernandez for the AL lead. If you throw the NL into this too, he’s fourth in strikeouts (Gio Gonzalez has 60). Lance Lynn also has 6 wins in the NL, and 27th in innings pitched with the NL in the mix. Doing quite well. I’ve actually seen him pitch live twice already this season. :)
Mike Adams & Joe Nathan followed him, and threw 1.1 innings of perfect relief behind him. Joe Nathan in particular was stellar, striking out the side on 15 pitches.
This was a “bunch” offense, as all four of our runs came in the fourth. The scoring started off with two run home run by Adrian Beltre (scoring Josh). After a Cruz single and a Torralba walk sandwiched around a Napoli foul tip out… Brandon Snyder came up, and flew out, but not before a passed ball moved the runners. That set up singles by Craig Gentry & Elvis Andrus scoring the other two runs of the inning.
Not a lot of offense this game. But the Rangers got the job done, and I was quite happy with the Yu Darvish outing. Makes me wonder, if this holds up… All Star game? Wash is picking again this year. :)