The third opinion was the charm.
The Texas Rangers announced that Yu Darvish is going to have Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2015 season.
After feeling discomfort in his triceps before his spring training debut, Darvish had an MRI that showed he had partially torn ligaments and inflammation in his right elbow. He got opinions from three other surgeons and they all said for him to have Tommy John surgery. The infamous Dr. James Andrews will perform the surgery. Darvish also missed the last two months of last season due to elbow inflammation.
Yu Darvish to have Tommy John Surgery
When healthy, Yu Darvish has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since he came from Japan in 2012 as shown with his 39-25 record, three All-Star selections and 680 strikeouts over 545 1/3 innings. Darvish was third in rookie of the year voting in the American league in 2012, behind Yoenis Cespedes and the winner Mike Trout. He had the most strikeouts in baseball in 2013 with 277 and had the fourth lowest ERA in the American League which was good enough to finish second in Cy Young voting in the American League that year behind Max Scherzer. Darvish is also the fastest pitcher to get to 500 strikeouts, as he reached the milestone in 401 2/3 innings passing Kerry Wood who did it in 404 2/3 innings. He has a base salary of $10 million this year and in 2016 and it goes up to $11.8 million in 2017.
This is a huge blow to the Texas Rangers’ playoff hopes, as they do not have any pitchers in their rotation with talent anywhere close to Yu Darvish’s; and they had very little quality depth before the injury. Their projected rotation, according to MLB.com is Derek Holland, Yovani Gallardo, Colby Lewis, Ross Detweiler and Nick Tepesch. That group does not inspire much confidence and it looks like they might be worse than they were last season which produced the third worst team ERA in the majors. It looks like it will be another long season in Texas.
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