Darvish Continues to Dazzle

Sunday's outing for Texas Rangers starting pitcher Yu Darvish didn't get off to the best start. The mystifying righty allowed two home runs in the first two innings and immediately put himself in a 3-0 hole to the Boston Red Sox, the team with the best record in the American League trying to fend off a Rangers sweep.

After that, the Red Sox could do nothing against Darvish, who went on to throw a career-high number of the pitches (127) and tied his career-high number for strikeouts (14), fanning the last batter he faced to end the seventh inning and giving a double fist-pump and a hearty yell in what was probably the most emotional we've seen Darvish since he arrived stateside last year.

Darvish's one weak spot this year has been the early innings, and that was the case on Sunday. Now, Darvish has allowed nine of his 13 runs this year in the first inning, but after that, you better get ready because when Darvish settles in he's game for an epic outing every time out.

To put things in perspective of what we're watching right now, Darvish is now third all-time in Rangers history with career double-digit strikeout games as Sunday marked his 12th as a Ranger. That's behind Nolan Ryan and Bobby Witt, who he likely will catch at some point this season. He's now on pace for well over 300 strikeouts this season and is planted firmly in the league lead right now with 72 and an amazing 14.2 strikeouts per nine innings in his seven starts this season.

He's just amazing, folks. There's really no other way to say it. He's turning into must-see, stop-down television around the baseball world when he pitches, not just here in DFW. Consider yourselves lucky, you know the Rangers do.

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