{"id":4675,"date":"2012-11-21T03:23:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T03:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/?p=4675"},"modified":"2017-04-06T19:36:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T19:36:53","slug":"yu-darvish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/?p=4675","title":{"rendered":"Yu Darvish"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a gorgeous early March afternoon of\u00a0the first day of 2012 spring training games, I was in Surprise, Arizona, to witness the Texas Rangers tangle with the Kansas City Royals. What I most remember is the excitement caused by Rangers Rookie Yu Darvish, a Japanese import who came to the states after a dazzling career in Japan that saw him go 93-38 over seven seasons with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. In what I thought of as a Darvish frenzy, there were several photographers on hand from the Japanese press who took a stunning array of pictures, including action shots of him adjusting his cap, tightening his belt, tugging at his sleeve and standing tall. Yep, Yu Darvish was the man of the hour. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the photographers who shadowed our man as he stood at attention during the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photographs of players lining up on Opening Day, the All Star Game and the World Series have graced sports pages, yearbooks and magazines for almost as long as there have been cameras. As far as I can recall, this was the first one that zoomed in on a particular player. Now that’s a frenzy!<\/p>\n

So how did Darvish do? The record says 16 wins, 9 losses, 3.90 ERA, 1.280 WHIP, 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings and a 3.52xFIP. I looked at his pre and post All Star numbers and saw a slight difference, but nothing overly significant. His \u00a01.36 WHIP and .227 OBA shrunk to 1.18 and .212. \u00a0However his 3.59 ERA expanded to 4.26.<\/p>\n

Will he improve in future years? I sure hope so. A number of factors look good. Even though his 2012 Texas Rangers team finished the season with a resounding thud, they’re still a solid club that should continue to contend. They can hit, so he’ll get good run support much of the time. He’s got a good pitching coach in Mike Maddux, and that’s another plus. The team’s owner, Nolan Ryan, is a Hall of Fame pitcher who has high expectations for his pitchers. And, getting back to Darvish, he has more pitches in his arsenal than most pitchers; I don’t even know what to call some of them, but the chances are good that he will mix them more effectively and throw them with greater confidence as a result of the experience he gained in his first major league campaign.<\/p>\n

So do I want Yu Davish, and his 4.0 WAR on my team? The answer is yes. Is he still a big story? Once again, the answer is yes, as evidenced by the below card from the 2012 Topps Update set. I enjoyed watching him pitch several times during his rookie campaign, and look forward with interest as the months come and go and he once again graces major league pitching mounds.<\/p>\n

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Did you know that Grubby Glove is on Facebook? We’re very active there with short observations about off-season moves, comments about baseball cards, brief player retrospectives and a variety of other things. After all, we’re all things baseball! \u00a0You can join the fun here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/grubbyglove<\/p>\n

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On a gorgeous early March afternoon of\u00a0the first day of 2012 spring training games, I was in Surprise, Arizona, to witness the Texas Rangers tangle with the Kansas City Royals. What I most remember is the excitement caused by Rangers Rookie Yu Darvish, a Japanese import who came to the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[331],"class_list":["post-4675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-players","tag-yu-darvish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4675"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5828,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675\/revisions\/5828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grubbyglove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}