Since the day Yu Darvish first arrived at the Surprise Recreation Campus in 2012, Texas Rangers pitching coaches have stressed to him the importance of recording quick outs.
His slider is his best pitch, and it can be devastating. It is as responsible for his outrageously good, historic strikeout rate as any other pitch.
The Rangers don’t want to see the slider disappear, but they do want to see the high pitch counts that have hampered Darvish go away. They want to see Darvish, who has only one career complete game of nine innings in 100 career starts, work in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings more often.