Yu Darvish and Cubs Studio Host In Riveting Baseball Stat Nerd Debate

Yu Darvish entered Wednesday evening having given up just seven earned runs in his previous four starts, but gave up six earned runs in 5.1 innings — including four homers — in what wound up being a rollercoaster victory for the Cubs over the Giants at Wrigley Field.

With that out of the way let’s talk about the riveting stat nerd debate he got into with David Kaplan, who is the studio host for pregame and postgame on NBC Sports Chicago and also hosts a daily radio show on ESPN1000. Kaplan believed that Darvish’s off-speed pitches with two outs were too predictable, and Darvish retorted with ammo that must’ve come from a stat guru in the Cubs’ front office:

Kaplan then responded to a different tweeter asking why he didn’t respond to Darvish that one of the home run hitters — Kevin Pillar — was not a lefty, and Darvish had ever more stats at his disposal:

A parallel universe where we could see what this exchange would have looked like had the Cubs lost on Wednesday would be something to behold.