Preparing for culture shock

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2012 (5219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DALLAS — The Rangers have made a huge investment in Japanese right-hander Yu Darvish. Mike Maddux must find a way to make it work.

Maddux, the Rangers’ redoubtable pitching coach, will be Darvish’s teacher-counselor-confidant-tour guide. It can be a difficult assignment.

Starting pitchers are thoroughbreds, high-strung and often spooked by a different routine.

There is a clash between the pitching philosophies espoused in Japan and North America. In short, the Japanese school of thought maintains that pitchers should start less frequently, throw between starts more often and use more pitches than the North American model.

It is up to Maddux to bridge the gap and sell Darvish on a different approach. Maddux started the process before Darvish signed, picking the brains of peers who were put in the same situation.

“We’ll be prepared,” Maddux said.

Mike Brown was among those consulted. Brown pitched six seasons in the majors and also served as Darvish’s pitching coach for three seasons with Hokkaido Nippon Ham. Brown incorporated some major league principles into his work with Darvish.

“We were fortunate to have a management that allowed us to find the balance with the best of both worlds,” said Brown, a scout with Arizona. “There will be some differences, but Yu has an idea of what he has to do. Mike will be able to sit down and set up a program with him.”

Darvish will be the fourth Japanese pitcher with whom Maddux has worked in his career. He had right-hander Tomo Ohka for two seasons with Milwaukee and right-handers Yoshi Tateyama and Koji Uehara in the Rangers’ bullpen last season.

Ohka and Uehara were immersed in the major league game by the time they reached Maddux. Tateyama was in his first season away from Japan, making him a valuable case study to the Rangers.

Tateyama had a difficult transition. He had difficulty gripping the larger baseball. He threw on the side every day. He would not shake off his catcher, even if he were uncomfortable with the pitch selection.

The Rangers and Tateyama learned from each other in a long process, Maddux said. The experience has Maddux better prepared for Darvish.

“Yoshi was very much heavy into the (Japanese) culture, and there were things we had to learn the hard way,” Maddux said. “We had to change the culture of the way he saw things on the field and the way he had learned the game.

“It was a huge lesson that we learned.”

The first orders of business are to get Darvish acclimated to pitching in a five-man rotation and determining what are the best of his many pitches.

With off-days and six-man rotations, Darvish made 15 starts on six-plus days rest last season with Hokkaido Nippon Ham of the Pacific League. He would throw three times between starts: twice in the bullpen and once away from a mound.

“We’ll keep an eye on the volume of throwing,” Maddux said.

The report on Darvish is he has “the ability to throw more pitches than the catcher has fingers,” Maddux said.

With the Rangers, Maddux said, Darvish must determine which are his best three to four pitches, live and die with them and go for outs early in a count.

The Rangers gave Maddux the keys to their new $106.7 million luxury ride. He has to keep it in mint condition.

— The Dallas Morning News