Chicago Cubs: Yu Darvish says #TakeThat to the Kapman

Farts, Tweets, and I am the Kaiju! Coo Coo Ca Ch-YU!

After the game, one can only assume in the comfort of his home, Darvish decided to fact check a Kaplan tweet like Snopes after a presidential address. Kaplan’s point of contention was that Darvish had gotten too complacent throwing off-speed pitches with two strikes, while Darvish pointed out that the numbers bear out the need for such a strategy. Did the Giants do a nice job hitting home runs off Darvish’s off-speed offerings in his last start? Yes. Has the league in general hit his two-strike off-speed offerings? No.

As Darvish and Kaplan continued to go at it over twitter, Darvish pointed out that Kevin Pillar was literally the first right-handed hitter to get a hit off his splitter. This entire season.

Regardless of the stats, the point of this is that the little Twitter skirmish turned into a kaiju eating a troll. Darvish has often had the label of “soft” unfairly attached to him in his time in Chicago, but as Kaplan found out, Darvish is anything but soft, and he knows what he’s talking about to boot.

As Jim Croce famously said, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t mess around with Yu. Ok, maybe not that last part, but Kaplan would do well to remember Croce’s immortal words.

While this exchange may seem pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, it should at the very least be some food for thought. During a prolonged run of good pitching, it seems as Darvish is settling into his role on the team and his home in Chicago. He’s getting more comfortable. Why does this matter and how is it a good thing?

Take that!

For starters, it means he’s confident being himself and rocking out with what he knows is right. Darvish doesn’t need a blowhard telling him what pitches to throw when he has a catcher, pitching coach, manager, advanced analytics “geeks,” and his own brain.

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Darvish has had an elite run by several measures during this season. For starters, he is rocking a 176/51 K/BB ratio so far this season. Since June 10, it’s 98/7. And since July 3, it’s a ridiculous 71/2. Per Brendan Miller, his splitter whiff rate is seventh-best ever in the history of baseball, and per Darvish himself, right-handed hitters have a .030/.030/.121 slash line against it this season.

About the only issue he’s had this season is the number of home runs he has given up (30), but that might be a function of the philosophy not to walk guys. Not to mention, it might have something to do with the large, undimpled golf balls MLB is using this season.

In other words, the confidence he’s displaying on social media could very well be directly related to the confidence he’s showing on the hill. Even if the two are unrelated, the exchange in the locker room and on twitter this week showed that Darvish has overcome the rough honeymoon last year and won over a ton of fans. Six thousand likes for Darvish’s initial rebuttal to 208 for Kaplan’s broil-instigating tweet. Take that.

After his worst outing in nearly two months, the real test of Darvish’s confidence and moxie on the mound will come on Tuesday in New York. Based on his recent attitude and actions, don’t be surprised to see a bounceback effort in the Big Apple. Oh- and don’t expect any walks.