In front of a packed Globe Life Park crowd Saturday evening, Rangers ace Yu Darvish pitched in a Major League Baseball game for the first time in 627 days. Things could not have gone much better.
Darvish threw 81 pitches against the Pirates, 51 of them for strikes. He struck out seven batters in five innings of work, and allowed only one run against a Pittsburgh team that ranks fourth in MLB in runs scored this season.
Before the game, Rangers manager Jeff Banister had noted the team’s plan was for Darvish to throw about 85 pitches in his return to Major League Baseball.
Darvish is the three-time MLB All-Star for the Rangers and led all of baseball in strikeouts in 2013. He sat out the final two months of the 2014 season with elbow inflammation, and underwent Tommy John surgery in March of 2015, causing him to miss the entire 2015 season.
