November 10, 2017
Yu Darvish suffered the second worst game of his professional career last week. Those two worst games, unfortunately, were back-to-back appearances in the World Series, of all places, and resulted in two of his team’s four losses in the best-of-seven series, giving the championship status to the Houston Astros.
In Game Seven of the series, Darvish lasted a mere 1-2/3rds innings before he was replaced. That was the same as in Game Three. The two games were the shortest appearances of his professional career. He had never lasted less than three innings in any one of his previous 129 games.
“This pain is going to stay in me for awhile,” Darvish told reporters after the game.
His embarrassment was there for everyone to see, as the game was carried on nationwide television (in Japan as well as the US). It was the most-watched baseball game of the year.
Darvish gave up five runs in his brief tour on the mound in Game Seven. His Los Angeles Dodgers could not climb out of that 5-0 hole and eventually lost 5-1.
Along the way, however, Darvish struck out Yuli Gurriel, the Astros player caught mocking Darvish and racially insulting him after hitting a home run off him in Game Three.
Darvish fired only 47 pitches in Game Seven. His appearance started with a double and ended with a homerun. As that ball sailed into the stands, Darvish stood on the mound with his eyes closed and face scrunched up in agony.
Darvish surrendered nine runs in his 3-1/3 innings of World Series play. His earned run average of 21.60 is the second highest for a pitcher with at least three innings in a World Series.
Darvish said, “Most of the time, to anybody, it could happen, like the bad days and the good days. I had a bad day. That means somebody had a great day. I try to think of it that way and sometimes it works. Maybe this time it didn’t work because I let my teammates down.”
