Chicago Cubs: Holy smokes, Yu Darvish finally won a game

It happened. Chicago Cubs’ Yu Darvish finally won a game. And he didn’t look half bad doing it, either.

After the first inning of the game, Chicago Cubs’ starter Yu Darvish didn’t look too promising for the game. After throwing 30+ pitches, it was hard to tell if the Cubs’ starter would be able to make it to the fifth inning. But wouldn’t you know it, Darvish threw sixth innings of one run, two-hit baseball.

For Darvish, he never really looked comfortable in the first inning. He allowed two hits and hit one, walked one. Scott Schebler hit a deep ground ball that Javier Baez couldn’t come up with deep in the hole. Outside of that, that was it. He struck out seven batters across six innings of work.

Keep em’ coming

While the Cubs seemed to put runners on base in all but one inning, the Reds could not. After the first, Darvish went the four of the last five innings not allowing a single baserunner. In the fifth, he got a stellar play from Baez, who made a scoop, tagged the base and fired to first for the double play.

There was no other theatrics with Baez–well, accept the homer in the first inning following the Kyle Schwarber two-run shot. Schwarber then was called out on a pretty high pitch in the third, but it seemed reasonable enough to me–especially in a 6-1 ballgame.

Darvish was good enough, if just for one beautiful day in Cincinnati. It very well might have been the struggles of the Reds who chased one too many first pitches. But after throwing just 94 pitches? Especially after that first inning? It was all gravy as Darvish won his first game of the season.

Next: Happ gets the start at third base

The Cubs are off tomorrow and will play the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday night at Wrigley Field at 6:05 p.m. CT.