Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts spent the better part of the last month insisting Yu Darvish was making progress toward pitching to the expected level. On Wednesday night, Darvish turned in his best start since striking out 10 over seven scoreless innings in his Dodgers debut.
Buoyed by an early lead thanks in part to Cody Bellinger’s RBI triple, Darvish limited the San Francisco Giants to just three hits across seven shutout innings. He faced just one over the minimum and only allowed one baserunner to reach second base.
That was Hunter Pence, who led off the bottom of the first with an infield single. He moved into scoring position on a groundout, but was then caught in a rundown as part of a 1-6-5-4 double play.
While he only struck out five, Darvish effectively pitched to contact and retired 13 batters in a row before a leadoff single in the seventh.
Following his strong start, Darvish said a key to his success was focusing on one aspect, which he politely declined to reveal, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
Darvish wouldn’t say what the one thing was, saying “it was a secret.” But narrowing it down to one was an improvement. “I usually have, like, five secrets a day,” he said.
During his stint on the 10-day disabled list the 31-year-old worked with Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt to refine his mechanics. The focus was getting Darvish’s delivery and arm slot back to where it was before he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2015.
Darvish and Roberts believed progress was made in a start last week, despite the right-hander allowing five runs in 4.1 innings. His outing against the Giants marked a first without surrendering at least one home run since the aforementioned debut with the Dodgers on Aug. 4.
