The Texas Rangers wasted another great pitching day by Yu Darvish Saturday, as they lost 3-2 to the Chicago White Sox for lack of offense.
Still, it was only the fifth loss in the last 24 games, so it wasn’t anything to gripe about.
Darvish left the game with the score tied at 2-2, so he was not tabbed for the loss.
Darvish struck out 11 batters over seven innings. It was his tenth game of the season striking out at least 10 batters. But to the put that in better perspective, it was the 18th game of his entire career with 10 or more strikeouts. This is turning into Darvish’s premier season.
Darvish is padding his strikeout stats. He is the number one pitcher when it comes to strikeouts this year with a total of 225. No other pitcher has even reached 200. And the next eight pitchers behind Darvish on the strikeout numbers all have pitched more innings than Darvish.
Darvish’s sole mistake in Saturday’s game was a two-run homer in the sixth inning.
But there was one scare. Darvish tried to run to home plate to chase down a lose ball in the seventh inning. He stumbled. A hoard of Rangers all rose from the dugout—the manager, a trainer, and a translator among them—and rushed onto the field to check out how their number one pitcher was doing. He said he was fine.