Man look at that body.........
Anyways, Yu Darvish is the newest Japanese phenomenon and apparently the Blue Jays won the bid. I don't know how much but I think it's for a gazillion dollars and 100 crates of tea. Here's some of Darvish's scouting report:
The righthander works with a deep array of pitches, common for top Japanese hurlers. He throws four-seam, two-seam and cut fastballs and compliments them with at least three different breaking balls. I've also seen reports of Darvish mixing in a change-up and the ever elusive shuuto, often referred to as a 'gyroball' in the US, where the batter sees a dot and thus reads breaking ball but the pitch actually stays straight -- think of it like a backup slider.
Darvish has well-above-average arm strength. His fastball sat 151-155 km/h or 93-95 MPH for you non-metric types out there. Able to hit his spots around the knees while occasionally going upstairs for effect, Darvish has advanced control of his fastball coupled with the ability to sink, cut, or run the ball inside. His fastball doesn't move a ton, but it does move and move late. Everything Darvish throws off his fastball is heavy. Guys like him keep bat makers in business; Darvish will leave many big leaguers with toothpicks in their hands.
A couple different forms of slider are evident in Darvish's arsenal; one with more horizontal break, one vertical. He showed very good control, able to throw sliders for strikes, utilizing them most often early in the count. Occasionally he would sharpen the break and throw the pitch out of zone with two-strikes. When he did, the results were nasty.
He'll work in a very slow curve ball in the low 60 MPH range, just to keep batters off-balance. If you're squaring off against Darvish, you have to be ready for the ball to come in at pretty much any speed.
I didn't see a below-average pitch from Darvish. He doesn't have super, elite stuff like a Verlander but everything is good. I'd grade his fastball a 65, he seemed to have the most confidence in it. He probably has four or five other pitches that are 50-55 grades on the scouting scale to go along with 60+ command.
Blah, blah blah..... he's good.
Anyways, I'm a little pissed the Sox didn't at least try. Figuring our off season is going so well, it would have been nice to hear any type of rumor for a starter other than Bard and Aceves.
If he is the real deal, and I believe he is, the Blue Jays are building a pretty good team. They have a ton of young talent too build around Lawrie, Arrencibia, Ricky Romero, etc. So adding another front of the line starter that is MLB ready and is still real young is huge.
Nice to see another AL East team take initiative.
