A show of hands: How many of you know who Yu Darvish is? Not many, right? Well that’s because here in the states most of us are still being consumed with postseason baseball, and haven’t really spent any time talking about potential deals for the 2011 season.
Yu Darvish is being touted as the next power phenom arm out of Japan, and is the latest trending topic in baseball.
Shortly after Dick-K left for the America’s, Darvish quickly became the poster child of Japanese baseball where he is still very much looked at as Japan’s baseball preservation.
And Darvish doesn’t come without his accolades.
He brandishes a 63-24 record with a 2.20 ERA and 752 SOs, and has a mile long list of career awards:
- 2× Pacific League MVP(2007, 2009)
- 2007 Eiji Sawamura Award
- 2007 NPB Strikeout Champion
- 2009 NPB ERA Champion
- 2× Best Nine Award (2007, 2009)
- 2x Mitsui Golden Glove Award (2007-2008)
- 2006 Asia Series MVP
- 3x NPB All-Star (2007-2009)
- 2007 Climax Series MVP
- 2006 Japan Series Champion
Yurvish is also highly coveted for his repertoire of pitches that seemingly needs very little work, including a 4 seam fastball, a dangerous slider, and he has even been known to deal out a screwball.
His complimentary pitches include a splitter, a curve, a changeup, and a two seam fastball more commonly known in Jap[an as a Shuuto; a pitch made famous by players such as Noboru Akiyama, Kenjiro Kawasaki, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Masumi Kuwata.
But what are the odds of Darvish—a player who hasn’t actually expressed interest in coming to America—actually playing for a MLB team?
We’ll take a speculative look at 10 teams who have been named as possible suitors, and look at the odds of each team possibly grabbing Darvish’s services.