A pitcher can’t win games by himself, save for a unique situation where, say, he throws a complete-game shutout and drives in the game’s only run with a solo homer. (That scenario actually has happened in Major League Baseball on nine different occasions, most recently by Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets on May 2, 2019.)
A pitcher from the San Diego Padres had to get pinned with the ‘L’ in Game Five of the National League Division Series, and unfortunately, it was Yu Darvish.
He deserved better than getting the scarlet letter, considering he allowed just two runs in 6 2/3 innings of work, striking out four and walking one, getting credit for a quality start despite taking the loss.
In the other dugout, his countryman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, threw five shutout innings, giving up two hits, striking out two and walking one, earning the win for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Such is baseball, where, for some reason, we continue to hand out pitching wins and losses despite the stats being arbitrary and largely meaningless.
Need proof? Say Yamamoto had gotten one fewer out. Well, then he can’t get the win, because a starter has to go five full innings to get a win. The official scorer would then pick who he or she believed to be the Dodgers’ most effective reliever and award him the win.
Darvish has been outstanding over his MLB career; he’s a five-time All-Star and a two-time Cy Young Award runner up. At 37, he’s nearing the end of his career, but still has a little bit left in the tank. He’s signed through 2028, so he’ll be back, but you do have to wonder if this was his last great chance at getting to the World Series.
Yamamoto has had an outstanding rookie year after leaving Nippon Professional Baseball over the last offseason, signing a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers. We’ll see him for years to come, pitching for an organization that is perennially competitive and constantly striving to reach the World Series.
All this is to say that in a historic matchup — the first pitting a Japanese starter against another Japanese starter in the MLB Playoffs — someone on each side had to get awarded the meaningless, arbitrary statistics of a pitching win and a pitching loss, and so as a consolation prize, both Yamamoto and Darvish are the winners of World Baseball Network’s International MLB Player of the Week.
Photo: A double exposure photo of Yu Darvish of the San Diego Padres and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching during Game 5 of the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium on Friday, October 11, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Nicole Vasquez/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
