I hate that headline. It’s okay, you should, too. But it came to me while in the shower and before I toweled off and started thinking clearly, I was stuck with it. Speaking of toweling off, I just want to remind you that this exists:

(via Red State Blue State)

Tonight against the Yankees, Yu Darvish announced his presence with authority, tearing through the Yankees lineup and looking every bit the pitcher that the Rangers thought they were acquiring. Going up against a lineup of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, Darvish threw 119 pitches, 82 of them for strikes, finishing with 10 strikeouts in 8.1 shutout innings. Even nicer was that Darvish was able to locate six, count ‘em, six different pitches for strikes.

While the strike zone was a fairly generous one, Darvish was able to use all of those pitches make the usually stoic Yankee batters flail wildly out of the strike zone. My count may be off, but it appears that the Yankees chased roughly twenty pitches out of the zone:

Derek Jeter picked up two more hits in the loss, moving his average to .416, and after 77 at-bats this season, we’re about a week away before the first “Can Jeter hit .400?” articles? With the victory, the Rangers improved to a league best 14-4 and have already opened up a 7.5 game lead over the Angels.