The San Diego Padres defeated the Houston Astros 3-1 Monday night at Petco Park. That was in large part due to the excellence of Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish.
Darvish tossed six shutout innings, striking out three and needing just 79 pitches during the outing. With the three strikeouts, Darvish extended his Major League Baseball record of consecutive games with multiple strikeouts to 280, per OptaStats. That is the longest such streak for any player at any point in their career in the modern era (since 1901).
It is not the type of statistic you might think of. But when you actually take time to ponder, that is quite the feat. He never got bombed and pulled early without at least sitting a couple of guys down on strikes.
The Japanese-born superstar entered the big leagues in 2012 with the Texas Rangers. After five mostly successful seasons there, Darvish was dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He then spent three seasons with the Chicago Cubs before landing in San Diego.
He has had a tumultuous stint with the Padres, with two sub-par seasons intertwined with excellent ones. This year, Darvish missed three months due to injury but appears to be rounding into form as the postseason approaches.
On the year, Darvish is 6-3 with a 3.21 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. For his career, he is 109-88 with a 3.57 ERA. More impressively, he has racked up 1,994 strikeouts in just 1,694 innings, according to baseballreference.com. That is the eighth most among current pitchers in all of baseball.
Darvish will look to continue his dominance this weekend against the hapless Chicago White Sox. The Padres are 3.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West with 10 games remaining.
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