The race in the American League West is just tight enough to possibly be decided by one man.
Yu Darvish, come on down.
The Texas Rangers trail the Seattle Mariners by only a game-and-a-half, but they could use some help. They were just swept in a three-game series by the Oakland Athletics, dropping their record to 8-9 in May. Among the things not helping is their starting rotation hitting the skids in the past two weeks.
This is where Darvish comes in. Or, where he will be coming in.
Sidelined since March 2015 to recover from Tommy John surgery, Darvish is now on a comeback trail with few miles left on it. The 29-year-old right-hander has yet to hit a snag in four minor league rehab starts (via MiLB.com):
For what it's worth, that's a 1.29 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning, as well as an opponents' batting average of just .125. The "for what it's worth" part bears repeating, but that's still good!
Hence the simple goal the Japan native expressed for the rest of his rehab. As he put it through an interpreter after his last start, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com): "I feel pretty confident right now, so just keep going."
Darvish's next rehab outing is scheduled for Sunday. If that also goes well, he may be able to fulfill the kinda-sorta-official expectation that he'll rejoin the Rangers rotation before the end of the month.
The Rangers' hope, meanwhile, is surely that Darvish will to return to his pre-surgery form as one of the best pitchers in baseball.
Though Darvish only surpassed 30 starts in 2013, he was good enough to post a 3.27 ERA in the 545.1 innings in which he was healthy between 2012 and 2014. He was an All-Star three times and a top-10 American League Cy Young finisher twice. He also was rated as one of baseball's top 11 pitchers by Baseball-Reference.com's version of wins above replacement.
In reality, he was at least a top-11 pitcher. FanGraphs' WAR placed Darvish within baseball's top nine pitchers for those three seasons. The biggest reason for that was his strikeout rate. Darvish cut down 11.2 batters per nine innings, the highest rate of any qualified pitcher.
How he did that is fodder for an extended lesson in Pitchology, a recently (as in, literally just now) devised study of pitches. Brooks Baseball has tracked at least eight different pitches thrown by Darvish in his major league career. Five of those went into one of the best GIFs in the history of ever.
But like virtually every other pitcher not named R.A. Dickey or Steven Wright, Darvish works off the fastball. He used a four-seamer and sinker that sat in the 92-93 mph range and got as high as the mid-90s. According to the man himself, that velocity hasn't gone anywhere.
"I was nice and easy and throwing 94-95," Darvish said after his third rehab start, according to T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. "I'm going to show them 97-98, but most of the time you're going to see 94-95."
The word is also good concerning Darvish's most reliable moneymaker: his slider. As Double-A Frisco manager Joe Mikulik told Will Korn of MLB.com, it was "very sharp" in his most recent start.
If Darvish's slider is indeed at full strength, baseball is about to reclaim one of its deadliest weapons. That slider held hitters to a .156 average and a .235 slugging percentage between 2012 and 2014, and it tended to be the star of the show whenever he had a great outing. Like so:
What Darvish may not have upon his return is a good idea of where the ball is going.
With a career rate of 3.6 walks per nine innings, his control wasn't great to begin with. And now, his total of five walks in 14.0 innings against minor league hitters isn't encouraging. He's a candidate to add his name to a list of Tommy John survivors—one that even includes Adam Wainwright—who have struggled to find their control again.
Whether Darvish could get away with shoddy control would come down to his margin for error. He had a big one when he was striking out more than 11 batters per nine innings. Walks are going to be more likely to hurt him if he comes back and falls well short of that level of bat-missing mastery. Under those circumstances, he wouldn't be much of a shot in the arm to the Rangers rotation.
However, the positive buzz around Darvish's key pitches bodes well. So do the projections for his return at FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. The former projects him to strike out roughly 10 batters per nine innings. The latter puts the number closer to 11.
A pitcher like that would be helpful for any starting staff, but there aren't many that could use one more than the Rangers rotation. Though it boasts a solid 3.61 ERA, its collective rate of 6.7 strikeouts per nine innings is one of the worst in the majors. Outside of Cole Hamels, the Rangers don't have another starter who specializes in strikeouts.
Darvish returning and living up to expectations would therefore be exactly the shot in the arm the rotation needs. Getting 100 or so innings out of him could easily be worth a couple of extra wins.
Maybe that doesn't sound like much. But to win the AL West, it could be good enough.
Comparing Seattle's plus-38 run differential to Texas' minus-one mark highlights the former as the better team, but the Mariners have their cracks. An offense that has to hit at Safeco Field may not be able to sustain such an impressive power performance. And if Felix Hernandez crumbles under the weight of his diminished stuff, the Mariners rotation won't have a one-two punch as good as Hamels and Darvish.
It's reasonably certain that neither the Rangers nor the Mariners will run away with the AL West. If it does indeed stay close, all eyes, and all of the pressure, will be on Darvish.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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