Darvish trading slider for fastball in spring games
Rangers are hoping quick outs mean he can go deeper in games.
— Since the day Yu Darvish first arrived at the Surprise Recreation Campus in 2012, Texas Rangers pitching coaches have stressed to him the importance of recording quick outs.
His slider is his best pitch, and it can be devastating. It is as responsible for his outrageously good, historic strikeout rate as any other pitch.
The Rangers don’t want to see the slider disappear, but they do want to see the high pitch counts that have hampered Darvish go away. They want to see Darvish, who has only one career complete game of nine innings in 100 career starts, work in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings more often.
In theory, that would give the Rangers a better chance of winning when he starts. »
The beauty of college basketball is that no matter how ugly a season your favorite team has had, it is tossed one last life preserver in the month of March.
A lot of Texas teams will try to grab hold. Less than two weeks out from Selection Sunday, only four state teams — Baylor, SMU, UT-Arlington and Texas Southern — are in line to make the NCAA Tournament field, according to Planting the Seeds, the American-Statesman’s weekly projection.
Houston, TCU and Texas Tech have a lot of work to do with the clock ticking, and the other 16 NCAA Division I programs in the state are the longest of long shots.
For most, the only hope is to win the conference tournament. The lower- and mid-major tournaments begin this week while most of the big boys tip off next week, and all 32 champions earn their NCAA credentials. Of 347 Division I programs, about 300