My Friday night television game on Ch21 was another Yu Darvish start, I think it’s his third start on a Friday night (perhaps more, I didn’t look it up). There was some doubt recently about how he’s faring. Overall, his numbers were quite good. Not lights out, but darned good. His stuff is great, but I suspect we won’t see the real Darvish until next year. Having said that, as of June 15th, having a pitcher with eight wins and an ERA of 3.57 is nothing to sneeze at. I think if you asked most Rangers fan if they’d take an eight win pitcher in the middle of June, they’d be quite happy with that. Yeah, yeah, I know. Huge contract, bigger hoopla surrounding his arrival, so anything short of 13-0 at this point of the year is considered a failure, right?
Yu Darvish went out and looked stellar on Friday night. Had his pitches working. He went eight innings, threw 110 pitches, which is still under average for an eight inning outing (by 10). Allowed seven hits and two walks. One solo home run, but struck out eleven. The 11 k’s were what did it for me. Sure, and eight inning outing under average for pitchers per inning is always good to see. But 10+ strikeouts to me means he’s dominating rather obviously, and he was. Very VERY much liked watching this outing. I’m also starting to think that perhaps we might see more of Torrealba with Darvish on the mound, as the last few good outings from Darvish have had Torrealba behind the dish. Get it? Darvish? Dish? har har har (OK, I’m tired obviously). But seriously, it looks like Torrealba is doing better with Darvish than Napoli is. Be curious to see if a budding personal catcher thing is going on here.
The Rangers did the overwhelming majority of their scoring at once. They put up a five spot in the fifth inning. What’s interesting about that is that there was no power involved. It was all singles (and one hit by pitch; Andrus). Just very well bunched together. We did add a sixth run later on when Mitch Moreland had a big solo home run into the upper home run porch, but the big offensive moment was the five spot for sure.
But this game was more about Darvish. Yeah, I know – it’s the Houston Astros. But you WANT your guys to be pitching well and doing well against teams they should beat. So it’s good he did beat them.