Yu Darvish Debut: Don’t get too excited just yet

There was every reason in the world to love the Yu Darvish debut — just remember to temper your expectations.

The Los Angeles Dodgers made a power move at this year’s MLB trade deadline and wound up with Yu Darvish. He’s one of the better pitchers in the league, and now gives Los Angeles a chance to create a monster pitching lineup in the post-season.

Darvish’s first game came on Friday night against the Mets in New York. Through seven innings, Darvish stuck out ten and gave up just three hits. Additionally, he walked only one batter and didn’t allow any runs to cross home plate.

Leading up to the deadline, Darvish had a few bad outings and it was unclear for a moment which pitcher the Dodgers would be getting. However, they obviously welcome the dominant arm that showed up for them on Friday.

One of the reasons, though, that the debut shouldn’t be something to freak out about is simple — it’s not the post-season yet. It is that time of the year that the team got Darvish for, and all that matters at the end of the day is if he can deliver.

We’ve seen masterful performances from guys like Clayton Kershaw and Alex Wood plenty of times in the regular season. But if you looked at how the playoffs have treated the Dodgers over the last few seasons, it’d still give you reason to be concerned.

If anything, Darvish was the missing piece that they needed for right now. Clayton Kershaw’s back injury doesn’t help, but their offense has seemed to pick up any sort of slack that could be there.

One major positive takeaway though is that this dominance happened away from Los Angeles. Home field won’t mean much to opponents if they can get wins in close games and get dominant pitcher duels as often as possible.

That’s assuming they don’t blow any games at Dodger Stadium, but if you think about how Darvish could seriously improve their chances on the road, it’s worth getting exciting about. In the end, it’s not to say that Darvish didn’t dominate in his first game with Los Angeles.

Next: Alex Wood is tired

It’s just better to realize the long haul ahead, instead of a great game from somebody we already knew could throw.