See to believe

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Yu, me and everyone we know

I think you'd have to be a pretty dense baseball observer to not think that Yu Darvish had the tools and capabilities to pitch effectively in the big leagues.

I think he has the league's attention.

Darvish tossed a beautiful 8.1 innings allowing seven hits, two walks, no runs and striking out 10.

The key: Strikes. A lot of them and a lot of them early. Whereas the first four starts saw him perpetually behind the eight ball in 1-0 and 2-0 and 2-1 counts, Darvish was perpetually ahead of the New York Yankees in the 2-0 shutout. According to Evan Grant, he threw first-pitch strikes to 13 of 19 batters between the fourth and eighth innings when he was in a real groove.

He also got into trouble and got out. In the third, it was bases loaded with no outs, including a base on balls to the No. 9 hitter, Russell Martin, a personal pet peeve.

Just about as easily as he got into the mess, Darvish struck out Curtis Granderson and got Alex Rodriguez to ground into a 5-3 double play.

Incrementally, Darvish has gotten better and better over four starts. It's culminated in tonight. That chanting and the cheer from the 47,000 once he was pulled as goosebumpy. It's the only time I felt that way outside of a World Series game at the Ballpark.

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Otherwise, all due respect to the opposing pitcher, Hiroki Kuroda, who took the tough-luck loss. He was laboring early, but turned things around and worked that fastball slider combo for the last several innings. By the sixth and seventh innings, he was rolling.

Also some props to Elvis Andrus. He made some pretty spectacular plays saving Darvish's skin a couple of times. He is on a 50-game error-less streak, a club record for a shortstop (sorry, Scott Fletcher). He's handled 213 changes in that streak and his 75 error-less chances this season is best in the bigs.

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