Yu Darvish opens up about his injury-filled season in a blog post

Yu Darvish was recently diagnosed with an elbow stress reaction after he threw one inning in a rehab start for Class A South Bend last Sunday.

A couple of days later, he was ruled out for the rest of the 2018 season.

And a couple of days after that, Darvish opened up in a long, detailed post on his personal blog (link in Japanese).

This post was helpfully translated into English and sent out in this tweet:

You can, and should, read the entire English translation. The most important parts of the post, I think, are these thoughts:

Every morning when I woke up, I would pray, ‘I have to throw today, please let there be no pain.’ Those were very gloomy days.

And:

Meanwhile, the atmosphere around me had become, ‘Is he faking an injury?’, ‘Is it a mental problem?’ Those words made it extremely difficult for me to stop and rest, and it really took a toll on me emotionally.”

I’ll say it right here and right now: If I implied or stated anything like that at any time regarding Darvish, I owe him and you an apology. Reading the entire English translation, it’s clear that Darvish put in a tremendous amount of work but could not work through the pain, which obviously was real, and a real injury had occurred. He also wrote:

I really regret not pressing to get an MRI immediately after my minor league outing [in June] or getting an MRI with the contrast agent as soon as I went on the DL [in May].

Darvish concludes by writing:

I’m going to give it my all and come back stronger than ever!

2018 was a lost season for Yu Darvish. As a Cubs fan wanting him to succeed, I hope he does come back stronger than ever. The team will need him that way in 2019. All the best to Yu in coming back from this injury beginning next spring training.