Darvish did not escape the second inning in World Series Game 3.
HOUSTON — Dodgers starter Yu Darvish picked a bad team to be facing when he didn’t have his best stuff, and a bad time to endure one of the worst starts of his big-league career.
The Astros’ offense jumped all over Darvish in the second inning of Game 3 of the World Series at Minute Maid Park on Friday. As the right-hander appeared to struggle with his command, Houston hitters put good swings on seemingly everything he threw anywhere near the strike zone and chased Darvish from the game with four runs on his ledger before the second inning was through.
Here are five stats that show how thoroughly the Astros beat up the four-time All-Star:
Yu Darvish’ 1.2 IP tonight is the fewest in a start in his regular season or postseason career. Previous low was 3.0 vs Padres in Sept. pic.twitter.com/ky9Us7czSf
This one requires some qualification, as there’s a good chance that if Darvish were this bad in a regular-season game, his manager might have given him a little more time to figure things out. But Dave Roberts isn’t about to take chances with a pitcher who’s getting tagged in a World Series game, so he turned to his bullpen with two outs in the second inning. That made the start the shortest of Darvish’s MLB career by a full inning and a third.
Yu Darvish: 1st game in his MLB career he didnt strike out anybody
Darvish has averaged an astounding 11 strikeouts per nine innings across his Major League career. If he maintains that rate over his next 168 regular-season innings to qualify for the all-time leaderboard, he will rank No. 1 in MLB history in the stat. Darvish is a strikeout pitcher. Normally, even when he’s having an off night he’ll rack up a few. But the Astros struck out less than every other team in 2017, and nothing Darvish threw on Friday fooled them at all.
Yu Darvish threw 49 pitches. He got one swing and miss.
For his career, Darvish has gotten swinging strikes from opposing hitters on 12.2% of his pitches, a very good rate. On Friday, he got one swinging strike across 49 pitches, or just a hair above 2%. That’s less good.
The last three balls hit off Darvish in exit velo: Springer 104.9 mph Bregman 103.5 mph Altuve 107.5 mph
It wasn’t like Darvish just got victimized by some bloops and bleeders. Even the outs he got were loud. The Astros finished off his night with a trio of batted balls with 100-plus mph exit velocity. In the three seasons MLB has been tracking such things, he has never been hit so hard.
Astros had 5 batted balls of 100+ mph exit velocity, 80%+ hit probability, per @statcast. Previously, most vs. Darvish in a game was 3.
