Yu Darvish pitched 8 and 1/3 innings of no-run game with 10 strikeouts against New York Yankees. Darvish is 3-0 with a 2.42 ERA for the season. (Photo by Mike Stone/Reuters)
NOTE: updated with Hisashi Iwakuma and Yu Darvish facing off on Sept. 14, 2012, And Daisuke Matsuzaka vs Hiroki Kuroda match up on Oct 3. Making them the 8th and 9th time in MLB history when Japanese pitchers faced off.
What a game. New York Yankees’ Hiroki Kuroda and Texas Rangers’ Yu Darvish faced off in a game last night, and it was as good as the hype.
From NYTime’s David Waldstein’s “Two Japanese Starters: One Good, One Great”
…It was a game that was expected to cause more than a few fans in Japan who stayed home to watch the live broadcast Wednesday morning to be tardy for work or school.
If they did, it was worth a reprimand.
Kuroda pitched very well, but Darvish was brilliant, living up to the billing and leading the Rangers to a 2-0 victory.
“You hear a lot about guys when they get hyped,” Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira said. “He was everything you heard.”
In the best of his four starts, Darvish was two outs from his first shutout. He limited the Yankees to 7 hits and struck out 10, baffling a lineup that had scored at least six runs in each of its previous six games.
With a combination of diving breaking balls and a darting fastball, all of which were thrown for strikes, Darvish was in command all game. He also has a cut fastball, a split-finger fastball, and a nasty changeup that he featured later in the game.
In his previous three starts, Darvish had struggled with his command. But not on this night. On nearly every pitch, the ball seemed to cross some part of the strike zone, but it rarely stayed there long enough to hit.
…
In the top of the ninth, Darvish (3-0) gave up a one-out hit to Nick Swisher and was taken out to a chorus of “Yuuuuu!” from the 47,085 at Rangers Ballpark. Closer Joe Nathan came in and got a double-play ball from Raul Ibanez on the first pitch to end the game.
It was the first time the Rangers had shut out the Yankees here since 2000. And Darvish had the longest streak of shutout innings by a Rangers pitcher against the Yankees since Bob Tewksbury shut them out in 1995.
But Darvish, who struggled in his first start, seems to be reining in his stuff. He has allowed one or no runs in his last three starts to lower his earned run average to 2.42.
Kuroda was almost as good. He allowed a home run to Ian Kinsler leading off the first and a two-out, run-scoring single by Josh Hamilton in the third. On most nights, that would be enough for a victory, but not with the way Darvish was pitching.
“The toughest thing for us is that we wasted a great start by Hiroki,” Teixeira said.
Darvish’s first start against the Seattle Mariners, with the Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki, was watched by an estimated four million people in Japan. This matchup, created after a rainout Sunday in Boston that changed the Yankees’ pitching schedule, was expected to draw at least that many viewers.
But both pitchers tried to remain focused on the opposing hitters, and not the international significance of the game.
“For me, every game is same,” Darvish said. “I know all those things but I am happy to help the team win against any teams, and I could do the job tonight.”
This was the seventh time that the Japanese starting pitchers faced off against each other. I had an blog post in 2009 about it, but here is an update of that entry Japanese pitchers facing off: Kawakami vs Matsuzaka.
History of 7 match-ups where Japanese-born starting pitchers faced off
- May 7, 1999Seattle Mariners Mac Suzuki vs New York Yankees Hideki Irabu
SEA A 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 - 1 5 2 NY A 0 0 0 0 3 5 2 0 x - 10 10 1 WP: Irabu (1-0) LP: Suzuki (0-1) HR: Russ Davis (8), Jeter (6)
- July 2, 2000Detroit Tigers Hideo Nomo vs Kansas City Royals Mac Suzuki
DET A 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 - 2 6 0 KC A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 3 0 WP: Nomo (3-7) LP: Suzuki (3-3) SV: Jones (23) HR: Polonia (5)
- June 19, 2002Montreal Expos Tomokazu Ohka vs Kansas City Royals Mac Suzuki
KC A 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 - 3 10 1 MON N 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 x - 6 8 2 WP: Ohka (7-3) LP: Suzuki (0-2) SV: Stewart (7)
- May 9, 2007Red Sox Daisuke Matsuzaka vs Toronto Blue Jays Tomokazu Ohka
BOS A 1 2 0 0 0 3 0 2 1 - 9 12 0 TOR A 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 - 3 8 2 WP: Matsuzaka (4-2) LP: Ohka (2-4) HR: Lugo (2), Ortiz (9), Ramirez (6), Lowell (6), Overbay 2 (5)
- June 19, 2009Red Sox Daisuke Matsuzaka vs Atlanta Braves Kenshin Kawakami
MLB Game Day
Retrosheet box scoreATL N 2 0 0 2 2 0 1 0 1 - 8 11 1 BOS A 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 - 2 2 1 WP: Kawakami (4-6) LP: Matsuzaka (1-5) HR: McLouth (12,1st inning off Matsuzaka 0 on 0 out), Bay (18,6th inning off Kawakami 1 on 2 out)
- July 22, 2010Los Angeles Dodgers Hiroki Kuroda vs New York Mets Hisanori Takahashi
NY N 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 5 0 LA N 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 x - 2 4 0 WP: Kuroda (8-8) LP: Takahashi (7-5) SV: Kuo HR: Kemp (17)
- April 9, 2012Texas Rangers Yu Darvish vs New York Yankees Hiroki Kuroda
Retrosheet box score
BB-Reference box score
MLB.com box scoreNY A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 7 1 TEX A 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 X - 2 5 0 WP: Yu Darvish (3-0) LP: Hiroki Kuroda (1-3) SV: Joe Nathan (5) HR: I Kinsler (5, off H Kuroda; 1st inn, 0 on, 0 outs to Deep LF-CF).
- September 14, 2012Seattle Mariners Hisashi Iwakuma vs Texas Rangers Yu Darvish
Retrosheet box score
BB-Reference box score
MLB.com box scoreMariners 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 3 6 2 Rangers 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 7 X 9 11 0 WP: Yu Darvish (15-9) LP: Hisashi Iwakuma (6-5) HR: SEA: Saunders, M (15) . TEX: Kinsler (17) , Hamilton (42) .
- October 3, 2012Boston Red Sox Daisuke Matsuzaka vs New York Yankees Hiroki Kuroda
BB-Reference box score
MLB.com box score
Retrosheet1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E - - - - - - - - - - - - Red Sox 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 8 0 Yankees 0 3 2 0 2 2 5 0 X 14 15 0 W: Hiroki Kuroda (16-11) L: Daisuke Matsuzaka (1-7)
