According to Rangers’ team president Nolan Ryan, the secret to Yu Darvish’s rapid improvement as a Major League pitcher isn’t much of a secret at all.
In a recent appearance on ESPN Radio 103.3 FM’s “Galloway and Company”, Ryan told his hosts that Darvish’s success began to increase as his confidence did. That, once Darvish got into the swing of things stateside and started to trust his stuff, particularly his fastball, the results began to reflect the sort of pitcher Texas thought they were getting when they shelled out the money to land the 25-year-old.
“He’s throwing a higher percentage of strikes and he’s getting his fastball over more and getting it down,” Ryan said, per ESPN Dallas. “He has an awful lot of confidence in his other pitches and throws them and gives the hitters a lot of different looks. And so I think what we’ve seen is him just develop more confidence and pitch more like what we’d seen him in Japan.”
Darvish was tagged with his first loss on Sunday, but he didn’t really pitch all that poorly, giving up four runs (three earned) over six innings, striking out 11 and walking four. After the loss, Darvish is 4-1 with a 2.54 ERA.
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