On June 7 at Petco Park, he threw seven shutout innings while primarily relying on his cutter and sinker. Whatever the plan was, Darvish has excelled, in a small sample, against the 2022 Mets. “We have a game plan,” Nola said, “but usually we never follow the game plan.” “With him, he’s got three different slider shapes, two different cutter shapes, a slow curveball, hard curveball, the sinker, cutter, four-seam … I mean, he’s got everything … he can kind of switch things around and navigate the lineup a little bit better.”ĭepending on what was working on a given day and how hitters were reacting, Darvish and his catcher regularly veered from the script. “A lot of guys who have four pitches, it’s hard to change up a whole lot because there’s not much to choose from,” Musgrove said. 183 or worse against Darvish’s four-seamer, slider, sinker, splitter and curveball. This season, according to Statcast, opponents batted. Sometimes, the adjustment involves ditching a temporarily ineffective pitch for one of his many other weapons. “A lot of us, it might take a game or two to make those adjustments, and he’s able to make those adjustments within the same game, sometimes within the inning.” “He’s so good that even in games where he might give up a few runs, you see him make those adjustments very quick,” said Nick Martinez, who reunited with Darvish this year after teaming with him for the Rangers. Well before this year, he acquired a reputation for learning (or stealing) new pitches within a matter of days. Virtually no one on the planet can manipulate a baseball as Darvish can. But, like the upshoot slider and Gallen’s curveball, they are not exercises in frivolity they are meant to keep hitters off balance, to give repeat opponents different looks and, yes, to satisfy his obsession with spin.Īt this stage of his career, he has earned the leeway. He has since experimented with at least a few more. “I don’t know what it was before,” said Ruben Niebla, San Diego’s first-year pitching coach, “but I know that this year he is very aware (that) every pitch that he wants to throw has a purpose.”ĭarvish entered the year with as many as 11 pitch types, including variations of certain offerings. “It’s kind of unmatched, as far as I’ve seen,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. He’s watching film non-stop, (including) right after the game, looking at the next team we’ll be facing a week later.” I mean, he looks at every single variable. “But he’s breaking it down to different counts - pitcher’s count, hitter’s count, home park, away park. “All of us are always looking at what we can throw to get ahead in the count, what guys chase when we want to put guys away, what guys are aggressive early,” fellow starter Joe Musgrove said. And, largely because of his studiousness, he might be enjoying himself more than ever, too.Ĭatcher Austin Nola, on working with Darvish: “We have a game plan, but usually we never follow the game plan.” (Orlando Ramirez / USA Today) Now, at 36, he might be pitching as well as ever. And many of them saw more between-starts preparation - in volume and detail - than they had seen from any pitcher.ĭarvish, who rose to stardom as a freakishly talented teenager, once relied more on feel than video, more on premade scouting reports than his own game-planning. In his second season with the Padres, teammates and coaches noticed the right-hander was more at ease in his environment. Meanwhile, Darvish found his process especially fulfilling. In two games against the Mets, Friday’s playoff opponent, he tossed a combined 14 innings and yielded only one run. Darvish posted a 3.10 ERA, notched a career-low WHIP (0.950) and completed at least six frames in all but two of his 30 starts. This year’s results have helped, of course. “That has been a very fun process for me.” “The fun process for me has been, particularly this year, studying the hitters in the way I was studying,” Darvish said through interpreter Shingo Horie. And there was something else he had often discussed since he fired six no-hit innings on Opening Day. His fastball command, he felt, had been sharp. Yet on Thursday, the eve of Darvish’s Game 1 start in the Wild Card Series, the reigning National League Pitcher of the Month mentioned other factors when asked about his recent success. 3, he recorded his 3,000th professional strikeout, joining Hideo Nomo as the only players to reach the milestone between careers in Japan and the U.S. Last season, he became the fastest pitcher to log 1,500 strikeouts in the majors. The right-hander possesses the most varied and unpredictable repertoire in baseball. Crafting and honing offspeed pitches, for Darvish, has long been a source of enjoyment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |