As if we needed someone else to tell us this, but guess what, Rangers fans?
Yu Darvish is one of the most thrilling pitchers in all of baseball and is pretty much must-see TV or in person when he takes the hill every five days.
Jayson Stark of ESPN.com and some of his colleagues at ESPN ranked the top must-see pitchers in baseball and your own Yu Darvish finished in the top 10.
The No. 1 entry, to no surprise, was Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez, who unfortunately was one of the many Tommy John victims last week and will be out until some time next season. He received 17 votes in the poll.
Coming in second was Dallas native Clayton Kershaw, followed by King Felix in third. There was a tie for fourth between Max Scherzer and Masahiro Tanaka, and sixth place went to Scherzer's rotation mate, Justin Verlander.
That's where Darvish checks in at No. 7, even though he's No. 1 in our hearts. Here's what Stark wrote about Darvish, who received six votes ahead of three players tied for eighth (Cliff Lee, Adam Wainwright and Mark Buehrle).
I had to chuckle when one of our voters described Darvish as "most likely to throw a perfect game on any given night." Uh, either that or "most likely to have one broken up with two outs in the ninth — or five days later."
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But whatever. Darvish has to be on this list, just because he's baseball's ultimate swing-and-miss machine. He reached 500 career strikeouts in fewer innings than any pitcher in history. And his 21 double-digit strikeout games since 2012 are seven more than the next closest whiffmaster (Scherzer).
"Darvish is so electric when he's on," one exec said, "And the movement on his pitches is so special, he can do so many different things with the shape and speed of his breaking balls."
