Yu Darvish Debut

Yu Darvish Debut, Darvish impresses in Rangers’ spring debut. PEORIA, Ariz.—John Baker faced Yu Darvish once Wednesday and had a five-pitch plate appearance.

And Darvish, the Texas Rangers highly touted pitcher from Japan, threw five different types of pitches to the San Diego Padres' backup catcher.

"He started me off with a fastball," Baker said. "Then he threw me a curveball, then a split-finger, then a changeup and finally a good sinking cutter that he struck me out on. It was impressive. You just don't see that every day. He's been one of the great pitchers in the history of Japanese baseball and it's exciting to face him, even if you do come out on the wrong end of things."


The Rangers beat the Padres 6-2 in a Cactus League exhibition game at the Peoria Sports Complex but Darvish was the only thing that really mattered on a cool afternoon.

In a strong exhibition debut, the 25-year-old pitched two scoreless innings. He allowed two hits with no walks and three strikeouts while throwing 27 of his 37 pitches for strikes.

The Rangers couldn't have been happier with what they saw from their $107.7 million investment. They paid a $51,703,411 posting fee to the Hokaido Nippon Ham Fighters for the right to negotiate with Darvish, then signed the right-hander to a six-year, $56-million contract.

"I thought it was a pretty good debut for the rookie," Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux said with a grin.

It was hard to tell what Darvish thought. He was pretty much emotionless in his post-game press conference.

The Japanese reporters who covered Darvish throughout his stellar seven-year career in Nippon Professional Baseball say he was the same way in his native land.

"It's still very early in the spring," Darvish said. "I was just happy to face major league hitters from another team for the first time, but it is also still early in the spring for them, too."

Some of Darvish's teammates tried to have fun with him before he went out to warm up before the game—but he could not be rattled.

"Some of them were saying 'you're nervous, we know you're nervous,'" Darvish said. "But I wasn't nervous."

Darvish kept his cool when the Padres put runners in scoring position against him in both innings with a one-out double by Orlando Hudson in the first and a leadoff double by Will Venable in the second. After Hudson lined his double to right field, Darvish got Jesus Guzman to softly line out to center field then struck out Carlos Quentin swinging weakly at a split low and away.

Venable drove a double off the wall just to the left of the 410-foot sign in center field in the second inning and moved to third on Mark Kotsay's ground out. Darvish then reached high to snare James Darnell's comebacker and threw to catcher Mike Napoli, who tagged Venable out in a rundown.

Darvish then struck out Baker to end the inning.

The only time Darvish smiled when meeting with the media was after being asked about his play on Darnell's chopper.

"I was wondering when someone was going to ask about that," Darvish said.

Rangers manager Ron Washington was very happy about Darvish's play, especially during a spring training in which he has been putting an emphasis on pitchers' fielding practice. The Rangers pitchers had the worst fielding percentage in the major leagues last season despite winning their second straight American League pennant.

"That was a very athletic play in a key situation," Washington said. "He did a good job of helping himself there."

Darvish pitched out of the stretch position throughout the outing. He said his decision to pitch from the stretch or the windup with no runners on base is based totally on how he feels that day.

"You make your biggest pitches of the game from the stretch," Maddux said. "I certainly don't have a problem with someone wanting to hone their craft from the stretch position."

Darvish had tremendous success in Japan, where he was 93-38 with a 1.99 ERA in seven seasons. He pitched 55 complete games and 18 shutouts while amassing 1,250 strikeouts and winning the Pacific League's Most Valuable Player award in 2007 and 2009.

Darvish will try to continue that success in the major leagues and the Rangers obviously feel he can help them get back to the World Series for a third straight season after spending nine figures to bring him to the United States.

"We have expectations for him but I'm not going to put a number on it," Washington said. "We feel he is going to help us to win some baseball games. He has a pretty good team behind him. If he goes out and keeps us in games then there is no reason why he shouldn't have a lot of success. That's all we're asking of, keeping us in the ballgame."

Source:http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=sportsxchange-000593061_darvish-impresses-in-rangers-spring-debut