Grange on Darvish: Watch and wonder
Posted February 23, 2012 6:13 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Surprise, AZ – The ultimate return on the $108-million investment the Texas Rangers have made in Yu Darvish won’t be known for years to come.
Toronto Blue Jays fans, general manager Alex Anthopoulos and owners Rogers Communications can take some comfort in that.
But the short-term payoff the Jays missed out on when their bid for the right to sign the Japanese pitching star was as clear Thursday as the bright sun and the sparkling green grass at the first official day of spring training for the two-time defending AL champions.
Excitement. Optimism. Buzz.
That’s basically spring training defined, but care to guess which camp was swimming in it Thursday? The Rangers’ with the 25-year-old ace-in-waiting Darvish on board?
Or the Jays integrating 41-year-old former Rangers reliever Darren Oliver who – at $4 million for 2012 – is the Jays’ splashiest free agent signing of the Anthopoulos era?
And that was before Darvish revealed his easy, powerful delivery to a standing-room only crowd of international media that gathered for his first bullpen session and a brief live batting practice to a pair of overwhelmed minor leaguers.
And just to make it sting just a little more for Jays fans who wished the bid Anthopoulos made to win the posting process had topped the $51.7 million the Rangers paid to the Nippon Ham Fighters for the right to negotiate the six-year, $60-million contract it took to bring Darvish to the major leagues?
The athletic looking, 6-foot-5 right-hander, the son of a Japanese mother and an Iranian father, would have been happy to be a Blue Jay, though his first preference was to sign with an American team as he has lots of family in the U.S.
“It would [have been] nice to play in Toronto,” Darvish’s father, Farsad said while watching his son’s first official major league workout. “They have a nice team … the Blue Jays have a very good organization, they have a big Asian community there. Toronto is very cosmopolitan … we didn’t have any thing against that.”
So, in other words, nothing between the Jays being the focus of global baseball on the first day of spring training than those unspecified payroll parameters that Anthopoulos referred to at the winter meetings in December and which have coloured everything since.
Whether Toronto truly did miss out on an inning-eating front-of-the-rotation stud won’t be known at least until Darvish makes his first few starts.
But it’s a fact that before Darvish threw his first pitch in anger – he was limited to about 30 tosses at about 80 per cent effort Thursday morning – the Jays ‘loss’ has been the Rangers gain in terms of sheer springtime exuberance.
The parking lot across from the Rangers’ state of the art facility that rises out of the desert northeast of Phoenix was full at 8 a.m. The clubhouse was besieged when it opened moments later.
No one truly knows how Darvish’s jaw dropping numbers in Japan– a 1.99 ERA over seven seasons — will translate against major league hitting, which is why signing him will deemed risky until he delivers on his promise.
But Darvish has already delivered a jolt that promises to light up a Rangers camp where expectations were already high.
“There are some other teams that had some big acquisitions,” allowed Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux. “I’m sure Detroit is happy to have Prince [Fielder] aboard. I’m sure our Western Division rival [the Anaheim Angels] is very happy to have their new slugger and new pitcher. There are a lot of teams that are ecstatic about the new players they acquired and we feel like we had a great acquisition in Yu Darvish.”
There were the expected efforts to temper what threatens to be a hype train without brakes until Davish actually faces major league hitters.
“Just another bullpen,” said Rangers catcher Mike Napoli who caught his new teammates for the first time, though he did acknowledge “the ball comes out of his hand pretty easy and he has good command, we’ll start with that.”
And Rangers starter Derek Holland, who is Darvish’ throwing partner for long-toss sessions pointed out that the Rangers were a pretty good team before the new guy showed up.
“It seems like people forget about the rest of the team,” said Holland. “There are a lot of other guys talented enough to be talking about out there. Yu is a good pitcher, don’t take anything away from him, but don’t forget about the rest of the guys on this squad.”
And then there was Darvish himself, who seemed comfortable interacting with his new teammates over the course of about an hour of infield work that preceded his throwing session.
While he has a club supplied interpreter to help him through meetings and media sessions, on the field and in the clubhouse he’s on his own, with predictable results.
“They have been teaching me a lot of words,” he said at a press conference attended by about 130 media squished into a small room at a recreation centre. “English and Spanish, but not formal.”
And the attention, the excitement he’s generated before his major league career has ever began? What does he think of that?
“It’s not normal,” he said. “Even now I think am I the type of player that deserves it? I don’t know. “
The Rangers paid their money and get to find out right along with him. The Toronto Blue Jays and their fans will only be able to watch and wonder.
