The good news was that his horrible first game and especially first inning in the United States was just an oddity. The accompanying chart shows how his earned run average has improved dramatically from a horrid 7.94 in that first game to 1.59 in his second and 1.42 in his third. His career average over seven years in Japan was 1.99, so he is actually doing better in the United States than in Japan in this key statistic for measuring pitcher quality—if you ignore that first game that Darvish would certainly like to ignore.
The best ERA for any active pitcher in US baseball is 2.21 for Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. That is also the best for any career pitcher in the modern (post-1920) era of US baseball. That is presumably what Darvish is aiming to best.
But he is walking players like crazy. In three games and 17 2/3rds innings, he has walked 13 players. To use a statistic not used in baseball, he has so far walked 6.6 batters every nine innings in the United States versus 2.5 every nine innings Japan; he is walking batters at almost triple he rate he did in Japan.
The US ball is a little different from the ball in Japan and the pitching mound is not the same height, so he may be having some problems adjusting.
In terms of strikeouts, he is a little shy of his numbers in Japan where he had almost one strikeout for each inning pitched—1,259 strikeouts for 1,268 2/3rds innings pitched over seven seasons in Japan. In the US, he is so far at .8 strikeouts per inning pitched.
In his third game last Thursday, Darvish pitched 6 1/3 innings, striking out five but also walking five (versus four in each of his first two games). He allowed one run on just two hits.
Darvish is being supported on the Texas Rangers by an impressive show of batting skill. In last Thursday’s game, the Rangers demolished the Detroit Tigers 10-3. At 79 runs through last Thursday, the Rangers have scored the most runs this year of any US baseball team. And Darvish and his fellow pitchers have also given up the fewest runs, just 33.
