April 19, 2019
Yu Darvish has gotten off to a rocky start with the Chicago Cubs this season, pitching in three games so far and losing two of them.
His earned run average (ERA) after three games is a horrid 7.50, more than double his career ERA of 3.54.
Darvish has always been a strikeout king, with a career average of 1.2 strikeouts per inning. This year, he has only 10 strikeouts in 12 innings, however. His weakness has frequently been a propensity to walk batters, with a career record of one walk every 2.6 innings. But this year, he has almost one walk per inning—11 walks in 12 innings.
Of the first 36 batters he faced, he walked 11. But he did not walk a single batter in his third game, so he has definitely improved as play has progressed.
As a team, the Cubs are off to a bad start, with a 3-8 record through the first two weeks of the season.
Adding to Darvish’s problems, he and his wife, Seiko, are being sued by the couple who live next door to them in Evanston, Illinois.
The Darvishes bought a $4.6 million house on Lake Michigan and sought to build a fence around the property. Their neighbors, Craig and Alexis Eyler, objected that the fence would block their view of the lake. The Eylers say they dropped their objection when the Darvishes agreed to build a wrought iron fence that they could see through. The Eylers have gone to court saying the Darvishes violated that agreement by building a solid cedar wood fence.
In addition, the Eylers say the Darvishes’ fence blocks off a utility easement that has existed for 70 years and had allowed the Eylers to have walking access to the lake. They are asking that the fence now blocking the easement be removed.