The Texas Rangers aren’t ready to give the division rival Los Angeles Angels a look at the 25-year-old Japanese star that is Yu Darvish.
Darvish was scheduled to faced the Angels on Sunday in a game that would have featured Texas’s ace from a year ago, C.J. Wilson, versus their projected ace for this year, Darvish. But that’s not going to happen, according to T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com:
“The Rangers originally planned for Darvish to do all his work in Cactus League games. But they have changed their minds and have decided against Darvish pitching against their primary American League West rival.”
Instead, Darvish will take his turn on Sunday in a minor league game.
It should be said that we understand the decision to keep the Japanese import under some degree of wraps from the Angels, who had a pretty productive offseason of their own, landing Albert Pujols and Wilson, among others. But a Darvish-Wilson match-up, just around a week after Wilson “pranked” Rangers’ catcher Mike Napoli by broadcasting his number on Twitter? Well, that would’ve been about as intriguing as Spring Training baseball gets.
