The Texas Rangers (44-32) and New York Yankees (41-34) meet for a Tuesday night matchup at Yankee Stadium. The game will begin at 7:05 p.m. ET and will air live on WWOR and stream on MLB.com with a paid subscription.
The matchup will feature two of the best Japanese born pitchers in Major League Baseball with Yu Darvish (7-3) and Hiroki Kuroda (7-5) each taking the hill. The two faced off a little over a year ago, which marked the 11th matchup between two Japanese starting pitchers in MLB history.
Darvish looks to end his longest winless drought of his two-year MLB career. He was successful in an 8 1/3 inning performance to earn a 2-0 victory against Kuroda last year. Kuroda allowed two runs in 6 2/3 innings in a losing effort.
Darvish is 0-2 since his last win on May 16, despite a dominant 2.66 ERA. However, the Rangers offense has done little to help their ace, averaging 1.99 runs of support in Darvish's winless draught.
Darvish struck out 10 batters faced in Tuesday's game against Oakland. Darvish leads the majors with 137 strikeouts entering Tuesday's matchup with the Yankees.
"I didn't feel that I pitched badly but I think I gave up runs too easily," said Darvish, who never went more than six straight starts without a win during seven seasons in Japan. He hadn't gone more than three in a row in the majors without winning.
Kuroda was also dealing with a five-star winless draught of his own. Kuroda ended his May 22-June 13 slump with a 6-4 win over the Dodgers on Wednesday.
Kuroda went 6.2 innings and allowed just two-runs in the winning effort. He currently owns a 2.78 ERA and got the best of Texas during a 3-0 win for New York on Aug. 14 of last season.
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