Yu Darvish was dialed in during this start, cruising with a perfect game intact through several innings. He mixed up his pitches, flashing a little three-finger signal that seemed to call for a cutter. His two-part windup looked smooth, and he had hitters swinging through pitches well out of the zone. One strikeout stood out when the batter was already backing away, and the ump still rang him up. It felt like Darvish had everything working—until one inning turned into a grind because of questionable calls behind the plate.
Darvish lost control of the count after a series of borderline pitches didn’t go his way. The three-finger signal came out again, but the ump didn’t bite on back-to-back strikes that looked fair. One pitch was clearly in the zone, another possibly missed the edge but wasn’t well framed, and a third was over the plate but called inside. The Padres’ catcher didn’t help with the framing, and the calls turned a clean inning into a long one. Still, Darvish worked out of it and kept his composure.
Despite the shaky umpiring, Darvish is putting together one of the better seasons among NL starters. Outside of one rough outing early in the year, he’s maintained a sub-3.00 ERA and kept hitters off balance. This game was another example of that—he didn’t get rattled by missed calls, stayed aggressive, and got the job done.