Keeping it simple: Darvish using high-spin fastball more often

All of baseball missed having Yu Darvish around in 2015, because he’s one of the game’s most interesting and dominant pitchers when he’s healthy. The Rangers, of course, missed him even more in October, when they lost to the Blue Jays in some part because of inconsistent starting pitching behind Cole Hamels — who himself cost a tremendous prospect package headed to Philadelphia so he could take Darvish’s spot atop Texas’ rotation.

From a data perspective, we missed Darvish, too. Last season was the first year of Statcast™, and as we collected all sorts of interesting data points on spin rates, exit velocities and route efficiencies, we didn’t get any of that on Darvish. We learned a lot about what made certain pitchers so dominant — like the spin on Justin Verlander’s fastball or Rich Hill’s curve — but so far as Darvish went, we were in the dark. We knew in his first three seasons, he had a 3.27 ERA and struck out 30 percent of the batters he faced. We just couldn’t go deeper, in the way we’d have wanted to.

Finally, Darvish made it back late in May, then for good in July after missing a month with a sore shoulder. The data is accumulating. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s impressive, even beyond the 410-foot homer he smashed last week.

Consider Darvish’s four-seam fastball, a pitch he uses about 40 percent of the time. With a spin rate of 2,515 rpm, it’s well above the Major League average of 2,263 rpm, and it’s one of the eight-best four-seamers among the 199 pitchers who have thrown as many as he has:

Top four-seam fastball spin rates, minimum 350 thrown, 2016

1. Verlander, 2,561 rpm 2. Max Scherzer, 2,555 rpm 3. Aroldis Chapman, 2,547 rpm 4. Matt Bush, 2,534 rpm 5. Cody Allen, 2,519 rpm 6. Blake Snell, 2,515 rpm 7. Xavier Cedeno, 2,511 rpm 8. …

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