Yu Darvish: Texas Rangers Pitcher Faces Toughest Test Tonight vs. Yankees

Is Yu Darvish the real deal?

It's still too early to tell, but the small sample size and the Texas Rangers' 3-0 record when he is on the hill suggest that Darvish was worth every penny of the combined $111.7 million they paid this summer to get him.

His command has been shaky at times, and he's missed with pitches you'd expect a pitcher of his caliber to make. However, the cultural gap of a new, bigger baseball, the Texas heat and the best hitters in the world won't translate just under two months into his big-league experience.

The road will be a long one over Darvish's next six years with the ball club, and it's one fans hope culminates with multiple World Series titles.

Tonight, though, we get a chance to see one of the most formidable lineups in baseball take on the former Japanese ace. As Derek Holland found out in the Rangers' 7-4 loss last night, there is no easy way around facing a lineup that has two sure-fire Hall of Famers like Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Darvish will take the mound opposite Hiroki Kuroda, marking only the seventh time in MLB history that two Japanese pitchers will square off head-to-head. That alone should be worth the price of admission.

Look for Darvish to focus on getting ahead of these Yankees hitters early. He's given up at least four walks in each of his first three starts. Holland gave up four last night, leading to him working too hard and eventually giving up a three-run home run to A-Rod that broke the game open.

This start will be a good gauge for where Darvish is in understanding the scouting reports Mike Maddux and Ron Washington are putting together for him, how he can attack good hitters at this level and if his command is slowly but surely improving.

He'll catch no breaks from the top to the bottom of the lineup, especially from three to seven, where he'll find guys named Teixeira, Cano and Swisher waiting to get one in the jet stream and the right field seats.

We'll also see what his breaking ball and secondary pitches look like against a better lineup. He's absolutely fooled hitters over the past two weeks with his off-speed stuff, so it will be interesting to note the Yankees' rate of contact against those pitches, as well.

By no means will we know if Darvish is the ace he has been advertised as by the end of the night, but maybe we'll catch a glimmer of what is to come.