NEWSLETTER
It’s now been more than a full calendar year of dominating since things clicked in Yu Darvish’s July 3, 2019 outing in Pittsburgh against the Pirates just before the All-Star break (like, half-way through that outing, he just figured something out (that I can’t seem to find, but I remember he later said it about that start, specifically)). The switch flipped. Darvish faced the Pirates again his next time out, and owned them. It was off to the races from there, and continues today.
In that time, Darvish has a 2.26 ERA over 131.2 innings, fourth best in baseball among starting pitchers who’ve pitched both years. His 2.52 FIP is third best in that category, trailing only Jacob deGrom (2.06) and Jack Flaherty (2.47). Darvish has had just ONE start – against the Giants last year – that you would characterize as “bad.” Otherwise, he’s ranged from “meh” at worst to “holy effing crap” at best. And there have been far more of the latter.
Last night was just the latest example, seven innings allowing just the one solo homer, marking his seventh quality start in a row. Darvish struck out 11 and walked none.
In the outing, Darvish literally struck out half of the batters he faced:
https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1302076504361361409
We talk about Darvish’s 11 pitches – many of them manipulations of “standard” pitches – and last night was a perfect example of why it’s not just about fooling a batter who cannot guess what’s coming when there are so many options. It’s also about having so many weapons at the ready if one or more of them is just not available to you on a given night:
Darvish said in past years he might have 3-4 issues per start. This year? Maybe one. Today's issue, four-seamers to righties.
"But I have a lot of cutters — three or four kinds of cutters. Two kinds of sliders. Or three kinds of curveballs. So I can replace the four-seam."
Oh.
— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) September 5, 2020
And that’s how it looked last night, because it sure didn’t *feel* like he was missing any of his pitches. A whopping 40% of the pitches he threw last night wound up either a called strike or a swinging strike. He was just throwing all kinds of everything for strikes at will, and putting every batter behind the 8-ball:
Cubs manager David Ross said the first-pitch strikes from Darvish really stood out on Friday night. He threw 17 out of 22.
"The way he command the strike zone with his secondary pitches is some of the best I've ever seen." pic.twitter.com/am0ceDBPIG
— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) September 5, 2020
In particular last night, I want to give shouts to Yu Darvish’s traditional curveball (the one that has the big break and comes in around 72 mph), which looked fantastic last night. It was such a freeze pitch – he threw it 12 times, and it netted only four swings (one whiff, three foul balls), and got FIVE called strikes.
It’s also fun to think about how Darvish modified his attack last night based on how the Cardinals attacked him his last time out (Cubs.com):
Darvish said a key was examining how St. Louis attacked him in their last meeting on Aug. 18.
“Last outing, I struggled against the Cardinals,” Darvish said. “Their guys fouled off a lot, and then I couldn’t get outs easy. So, today I had a plan. Not throwing a chase pitch after two strikes against lefties. I threw a lot of changeups. If I can throw a strike or not — I don’t care. Just throw a changeup. That made it confusing for them.”
Fun thing about Darvish? Statcast didn’t register any changeups from Darvish last night, but that’s an artifact of him having so many pitches that he deploys in different ways and calls what he calls them. I presume Statcast was incorrectly labeling 14 “splitters” – which can function for some as a changeup. Brooks Baseball, by contrast, had the pitches correctly labeled as changeups. He hasn’t thrown nearly that many this year in a start, and he didn’t throw a single splitter, which is unusual for him. So, you can see why Statcast was confused. Darvish messes with computer systems just as well as he messes with batters.
… now imagine you’re one of those batters, and you can tell Darvish is throwing something that kinda looks like his splitter in movement and velocity, but isn’t quite the same pitch. You’d just feel off all night long. Darvish is a monster.
On the season, Darvish’s numbers are absurd, leaving him the current crystal clear top pitcher in the National League:
