One of the subplots from yesterday's game was the number of pitches Yu Darvish was asked to throw. Darvish, who labored early, particularly in the third inning, ended up pitching the 7th inning with a 9-4 lead and the 8th inning with a 10-4 lead, with his pitch count ultimately ending up at 130.

I was surprised they left Darvish out there so long, given the number of high-stress pitches he threw early in the game and the comfortable lead the Rangers had. However, Ron Washington said after the game that he "wasn't comfortable" with the lead, and left Darvish out there because "I felt like he needed to get us through the eighth inning to give our bullpen a break."

Not exactly reassuring answers, particularly given that you've currently got an eight man bullpen with Cory Burns having been called up...and it drives home the point that the Rangers are likely going to have to make a move to shore up their bullpen, since Wash appears to have no faith in anyone other than Robbie Ross, Tanner Scheppers, and Joe Nathan right now.

Burns ended up pitching the 9th, but if Wash doesn't trust Burns, or Jason Frasor, or Joe Ortiz will a 5 or 6 run lead in the 7th or 8th inning, then there's a pretty significant problem with the state of the pen.

In any case, I assumed that this was something that was part of the Rangers' plan with Darvish, and that the front office was comfortable with him being worked that hard.

That is apparently not necessarily the case, though, per Todd Wills:

And Rangers general manager Jon Daniels met with manager Ron Washington after Thursday's game to discuss Darvish's pitch count.

I'm not sure if that makes me more concerned or less concerned about what happened last. Apparently, JD is being pro-active about the situation, which is good. On the other hand, it suggests that the organization isn't all on the same page in regards to how they are handling their $100M+ #1 starter.

It will be interesting to see how Darvish is handled in his next few starts.