Yu Darvish looked unhittable against the Cardinals Friday night as he showcased various iterations of his traditional pitch types. His pitches were so nasty that Statcast’s classification system couldn’t even accurately identify them.
According to Statcast, Darvish threw four- and two-seam fastballs about half the time. As we learned from the man himself after the game, however, at least one of those sinkers was incorrectly identified. It dropped off like a rock upon reaching the plate, more than a typical sinker, but at 93 mph, what options were there?
Under normal circumstances, we’d have gone on thinking Darvish got Matt Carpenter on a wicked two-seam.