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You won’t catch me doing this very often, but I thought I’d post some YouTube highlights of Yu Darvish’s last two games. I get the feeling that there are a lot of people who have read about him, but only a smaller percentage of those have actually seen him pitch. Here’s an opportunity to see some recent action. I’ve also included links to English-language box scores from JapaneseBaseball.com.

July 24: Chiba Lotte Marines 5, Nippon Ham Fighters 2 (box score)

Darvish goes 8 innings, but gives up 5 runs on 11 hits and 5 walks while taking the loss. The big blow was a 4th inning grand slam off the bat of DH Tasuku Hashimoto. Give Hashimoto credit; Darvish made a good pitch and he turned on it.

Lotte rookie Yuta Ohmine picked up his first career win in the game, striking out 6 over 6 innings of work.

Here’s a link to the content on YouTube.

July 17: Nippon Ham Fighters 3, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 1 (box score)

Vintage Darvish; a 4-hit complete game on 89 pitches. 10 strikeouts, no walks. This video has some good highlights of Darvish’s variety of stuff.

Here’s a link to the content on YouTube.