Yu Darvish Gets Trevor Plouffe Swinging With Nasty 61-MPH Curveball (GIF)

Yu Darvish doesn’t care if people consider him an “ace” or not. All he cares about is striking batters out.

Darvish leads the American League in strikeouts, and he showed why with his arsenal of pitches in Friday’s game against the Minnesota Twins. Twins third baseman Trevor Plouffe got his second look of the game against Darvish in the top of the fifth inning, and Darvish got Plouffe swinging for the second time.

Darvish fired in a 80-mph slider and a 94-mph fastball before slowing things down considerably with a heart-stopping 61-mph curveball. Plouffe took a hard swing ahead of the ball and missed it by a pretty wide margin for the third out of the inning.

Check out the impressive pitch in the GIF below.

GIF via Twitter/@lonestarball