ARLINGTON -- Yu Darvish has been at the center of trade rumors for a while now, but he was able to put them out of his mind before Wednesday's 22-10 loss to the Marlins at Globe Life Park.
Darvish said he'd thought about everything the day before, but he blocked it out and focused only on pitching on the day of his start. What resulted was what is likely Darvish's worst start of his career.
Dee Gordon set the tone early -- he homered on the first pitch he saw against Darvish -- and the Marlins didn't look back. Miami tagged him for 10 runs, the most Darvish has allowed in his career, and they knocked him out of the game after just 3 2/3 innings. It marked the second-shortest outing of Darvish's career, behind a 3 1/3-innings outing against Oakland in April 2014.
"From our vantage point, obviously there were a few balls that were hit hard and there were some that found some holes," Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. "The home runs early, these guys were attacking early. But it did seem like he got it together, then just couldn't find a way to put guys away."

Darvish surrendered homers to Gordon and Christian Yelich, and he permitted seven hits in the fourth inning as things began to unravel.

In all, 13 Marlins came to the plate and nine runs scored in the fourth, tied for the most runs the Rangers have allowed in an inning this year.
"The first three innings, I actually felt pretty good," Darvish said through an interpreter. "I thought I had the stuff to do it with. I got to the fourth inning and I couldn't locate my pitches, and they took advantage of it, and I gave up hits in the fourth inning."

There's a chance this could've been Darvish's last start with the Rangers, as he's currently slated to pitch next on Tuesday, the day after the non-waiver Trade Deadline. As such, the pressure to perform well might've been heightened.
But Darvish showed he wasn't thinking about it too much, and he joked a bit that the rumors might be a convenient way to forget this dreadful start ever occurred in the first place.
"It's not easy, but tomorrow's going to come, so I'm going to try to make excuses because of all the trade talk that's going on and just forget about it, and maybe it didn't happen," Darvish jokingly said. "As a pitcher, you don't give up 10 runs so often, but it happens. So sometimes you've just got to make excuses and make it up, and you just go with it."