Let’s just ease up a second. Let’s just take a breath and look at this before we anoint the Texas Rangers World Series champs. ESPN Dallas.com reports that on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, The Rangers came to terms with Japanese phenom Yu Darvish. It’s a six year deal worth about $60 million benjamins.
Plus the Rangers also had to fork over a $51.7 million just to bid on the guy. That’s a grand total of $111 million. Is Yu Darvish worth it? The Rangers think he is.
Lookit, there’s no doubt that Darvish is a good pitcher. According to ESPN Dallas.com in an article written by Richard Durrett, shows that Darvish went 18-6 last year and had an ERA of 1.14 along with 276 K’s. But that was over in Japan. It’s a whole different ball game now. The hitters he faced in Japan were okay. I mean there’s a hand full of hitters over there. But in the American big leagues, there’s more than a hand full. Every team has at least two or three guys that can crush it. He’s not used to facing that day in and day out.
Darvish will have a bit of an edge at first. The pitcher always has the early edge. That is until batters get fifteen to twenty-five cracks at him. By then, most major league hitters have a pretty good idea of what a certain pitcher has or doesn’t have. Ya dig?
In my humble opinion I see Darvish winning around 10-12 games and having an ERA at about 4.00. There’s going to be an adjustment period. The game is faster and more physical and the players are bigger and stronger over here. I just don’t see Darvish coming out of the gate and being that dominant. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe I’m not. But for $111 million fazools, I know who better be right. And that’s the Texas Rangers.
Source:
ESPN DALLAS