CHICAGO — It can’t be any fun facing Yu Darvish. The veteran right-hander throws seven different pitches, but even that number sells him short. Padres catcher Austin Nola uses 11 different signs to call those seven pitches, because Darvish has different versions of some pitches. In any count, at any moment, Darvish is liable to throw any one of those 11 offerings.
With that many choices, the game plan is often fluid. It changes on the fly, depending on what pitch is working – and depending on what weaknesses Darvish might sense in his opponent that night.
But this? Well, if there’s a vintage version of Yu Darvish, this was it.
Darvish was brilliant (again) on Monday night in the Padres’ 4-1 victory over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. He pitched eight innings of one-run ball, striking out seven and allowing five hits. Really, Yan Gomes’ solo homer in the second inning was Darvish’s only true mistake pitch of the night, a hanging slider that ended up in the left-field seats.
From there, Darvish was practically untouchable against his former team – his first outing in Wrigley Field since the Cubs traded him to San Diego in December 2020. Darvish used a tried and true formula they should know well in Chicago. He went heavy on the cutter early, and just when the Cubs hitters might’ve been picking up that spin – he blew his high-octane four-seam fastball right by them.
Then, in the game’s decisive moment, Darvish reached into his bag of tricks. With two outs and the tying run at the plate in the eighth inning, he got ahead of Cubs left fielder Ian Happ, 1-2, and then threw a filthy 91 mph splitter just below the strike zone.
Happ swung and missed. Darvish hopped off the mound and let loose a scream. An inning later, closer Taylor Rogers slammed the door on a 38-24 start for the Padres, their best in franchise history and good enough to move them into a virtual tie for first place in the National League West.