After giving up four runs in the first inning, Yu Darvish settled down and allowed on during the next 4 1/3 innings. That gave Texas time to come back, and score two in the first, three in the third and fourth innings to take an 8-5 lead on the Mariners. Darvish, despite a poor performance, is in line for the win. He threw 42 pitches in the first inning, 68 the rest of the game. He threw a lot of pitches out of the strike zone, however, 51 balls and 59 strikes.
He won. It helps to have the Texas offense on your side. They scored eleven runs.
And speaking of offense, the NL is averaging 8.18 runs per game, the AL 8.46. Might miss my guess, but I wouldn’t be amazed if the season ends with something like those numbers.
Except I think the NL will be a tad lower, a little below 8 r/g. And the AL will be a smidge higher, about 8.6 or 8.7 r/g. We’ll see.