But manager Ron Washington didn’t pull the erratic pitcher. Instead, he stuck with him. It was the right decision. Before the end of the second inning, fans saw the Darvish that everyone expected. At one point, he retired 10 batters in a row.
Powered by a bank of sluggers, the Texas Rangers supported Darvish to the hilt, racking up one run after another to overpower the Seattle Mariners 11-5 at home and cancel the five runs Darvish gave up.
As a result, Darvish was credited with the win, messy as it was.
Some critics thought Dar-vish wouldn’t be able to make it against the mighty band of American batsmen he would face in the United States. They thought he just shined against smaller and less powerful Japanese players.
But Darvish’s biggest problem in his first start in the regular season Monday was Japanese players. He gave up eight hits—and four of those were to the two Japanese players the Mariners put up against him.
Darvish acknowledged that he wasn’t in sync for his first appearance. “Mentally, I was very calm, but my body felt like it wanted to go and go and go,” he said through an interpreter. “At the beginning of the game, my mind and my body kind of weren’t on the same page…. It was pretty much a battle all night.”
The first inning was a total disaster. It looked like the sinking of the Titanic.
The first batter up was Chone Figgins. He didn’t do anything but stand at home plate as Darvish threw four straight balls and sent Figgins on a free trip to first base. Darvish seemed to lack control.
But he struck out the second batter. That, however, was just the calm before the storm.
The third batter was fellow Japanese Ichiro Suzuki. He hit a single.
Then Justin Smoak singled to load the bases.
Kyle Seager singled to drive in two runs.
Michael Saunders walked to fill the bases yet again.
Miquel Olivo singled, scoring the third run and keeping the bases loaded.
That brought up fellow Japanese Munenori Kawasaki, the only player for the Mariners to have faced Darvish before. Darvish walked him—with the bases loaded!—sending home the fourth run and keeping the bases loaded.
There was only one out, the Mariners had already scored four runs and the bases were loaded. It was ugly. The photo shown above this article was taken at that point.
Darvish paused and re-gained composure. He then struck out Brendan Ryan and induced Figgins to ground out. Two outs in a row; end of inning.
He had faced 10 batters—four singles, three walks, two strikeouts and one ground out.
In the second inning, Suzuki got a double and scored the fifth and last run of the game for the Mariners when Seager got a double.
That was when the Darvish everyone wanted to see showed up on the mound. He faced 16 more batters, retiring 13 of them.
He was relieved after 5 2/3rds innings. In those first two innings, Darvish gave up six of the eight hits, all five of the runs and three of the four walks chalked up against him.
For pitchers, the main statistic is his earned run average—the lower the better. In Japan, Darvish had a career ERA of 1.99, very impressive. After Monday’s game, Darvish’s ERA in the United States is an embarrassing 7.94.
But the key may be that manager Washington had confidence in Darvish and left him in the game to the point that he got over the starting jitters in less than two innings and performed well after that. Washington said, “In the first inning, it just seemed like he couldn’t get control of his emotions. He checked himself, and showed what kind of battler and warrior he is.”
And he is still learning. When he was pulled in the sixth inning and walked off the field, the fans rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation with loud shouts of “Yuuuuuuu.” Yu just walked off the field. He didn’t tip his hat to the crowd in keeping with American baseball etiquette. When told of his flub, he acknowledged not knowing that was US tradition.
But Yu was also astounded by the applause he got. No other pitcher with a 7.94 ERA has gotten such a send-off from the fans. “I was in awe,” he said of the fans’ ecstatic treatment. “[It was] nothing like an outing I can be very proud of. But even the outing that I had, people stood up and applauded for me. It’s very moving.”
Despite the horrid first inning, 59 of Darvish’s 110 pitches Monday were strikes—42 of all those pitches were in the horrid first inning.
The president of the Texas Rangers is Nolan Ryan, one of the greatest pitchers in US baseball history. Ryan said after the game, “I didn’t give him that much of a chance for the pure number of pitches he threw in the first inning and the fact that he didn’t have a feel for anything. He hung in there and looked like a totally different pitcher at the end than he did at the start.”
Darvish will pitch about once a week for the Rangers.
