When you watch the game’s elite pitchers pitch, in general you know what you’re going to see. Most of the time, they’re going to get the better of their opponents, and you know how they’re going to do it.
Clayton Kershaw is going to keep hitters off-balance by mixing his fastball, curveball, slider, and changeup, all of which are well above-average pitches, and the curveball is the best. He’s also not going to walk anybody.
Jake Arrieta is going to go straight at hitters, generate weak contact, and can toss a no-hitter at any time.
Noah Syndergaard is going to throw everything really, really hard, and Thor you into submission.
With Chris Sale, everything’s going to be coming in from a weird angle. The fastball is fast and the slider is going to sweep and swerve.
That’s a gross generalization of the best in the game, but that’s basically what they do and do better than anyone, with the results to back it up.
But when Yu Darvish is pitching, you don’t really know what you’re going to see. He doesn’t throw just one fastball. He doesn’t throw just one curveball. Lots of pitchers throw 95 MPH fastballs, but somehow it seems no one throws them like Darvish. Sometimes the fastball is cutting, or rising, or running.
Just about the only pitch that is easy to recognize is the 65 MPH curveball, which scrambles the brain a little when sandwiched between two 96 MPH fastballs. He doesn’t use all his pitches to every batter. Sometimes, he doesn’t use all his pitches in a game. And based on reports of the kind of competitor and perfectionist he is, watching it you know every decision is made with intense intentionality.
The complete unknown of what is going to come out of his hand next makes him fascinating to watch operate on the mound, even more fascinating than watching the game’s elite, in my opinion.
In the same way that the ball sounds differently coming off of Josh Hamilton’s bat in his prime or Nomar Mazara’s now, the ball just looks different coming out of Darvish’s hand. It’s explosive.
In his first start since returning from Tommy John surgery, Darvish looked like the best version of himself for five innings. According to Brooks Baseball, he topped out at 99.5 MPH, the fastest he’s thrown since 2009. His fastball averaged 96.7 MPH, a full three miles per hour faster than he threw from 2012-14. He established the fastball early, throwing some kind of fastball on 25 of his 30 pitches the first time through the Pirates lineup.
On the second time through the order, 35 out of 47 were fastballs. He didn’t throw a changeup, but he did take something off the fastball at times, as it ranged from 90 to 99 MPH (the four-seam, not just the cutter). He didn’t throw the slow curve at all until the second time through the order. He threw 14 sliders on the day, which is not a lot for him, but 13 of them were for strikes.
He even got inconsistently squeezed on the low strike by the umpire several times, but didn’t let it rattle him or prevent him from taking care of business.
Darvish was good in his debut. And when Darvish is good, you wonder how anyone ever hits him. But the thing about Darvish over his career is that he has had starts where he has really struggled, especially against patient teams. And because he can be so good, the struggle starts are that much more frustrating. But that’s part of what makes him appointment television. You just don’t know whether or not this is going to be the night you see something special.
I’m not sure where Darvish fits in the national conversation regarding the game’s best pitchers. Considering he hadn’t pitched in a MLB game for 22 months, he’s probably at least on the fringe of the conversation. But if he can command the strike zone and dominate as he did against a good team in the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday night, it won’t take long for him to be in the conversation of the top five pitchers in baseball. I know that for me, at least, there is no one I would rather watch.
Be sure to follow Peter on Twitter @futuregm so you can geek out with him about Yu Darvish starts.
