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?