Yu Darvish makes his major league debut tonight. Not a bad opponent for it either: the Seattle Mariners. I have this feeling the first Darvish-Ichiro matchup is gonna get a little press in Japan. Just a hunch.
Darvish was 1-0 with a 3.60 ERA and 21 strikeouts in 15 innings in spring training. He’s not unhittable, certainly, as his mistakes seemed to be in the zone on offspeed things -- I saw Will Venable absolutely murder a Darvish pitch in Peoria that was still going up when it hit the tall batter’s eye in center field -- but anyone with that kind of strikeout mojo is outrageously fun to watch.
Good luck, Mariners.
