Rangers’ Yu Darvish surprises by returning to pitch after nearly 2-hour rain delay

ARLINGTON, Texas—Anytime a game is delayed for one hour, it typically means the end of the workday for a starting pitcher. To rev up the arm again after such a long cooling period could lead to injury. So why did the Rangers allow their $107 million investment, Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish, to return Friday night after a rain delay that lasted nearly two hours?

Because he would have it no other way.  “He wasn’t going to be denied to do his job,” Rangers manager Ron Washington said Saturday morning. “He made it quite clear. Believe me, we had quite a few minds in here going over that stuff, but the guy was ridiculously adamant about taking the ball. You could tell the way he was talking, he was pitching.”

Darvish ended up with his shortest outing in seven big-league starts, allowing three runs in 5 1/3 innings while throwing a season-low 93 pitches. But as Angels manager Mike Scioscia pointed out, Darvish “probably threw three innings underneath trying to stay sharp, stay loose.”

With Josh Hamilton hitting his seventh and eighth homers of the week, Darvish had little difficulty securing his fifth win to go with a 2.84 ERA and a strikeout rate of 10.9 per nine innings. But in this 10-3 laugher, the 25-year-old right-hander scored bigger in the clubhouse than on the field.

“(He showed) that he has heart, that he is a winner, that he is for real,” Washington said. “Normally, you don’t see a pitcher sit that long and come back. Darvish was adamant. He didn’t come here, he said, not to pitch. So he pitched.”

via Rangers’ Yu Darvish surprises by returning to pitch after nearly 2-hour rain delay – MLB – Sporting News.