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The sense has been that Yu Darvish has worked particularly well with backup catcher Geovany Soto ever since Soto came over to Texas from the Cubs last year. That's not been borne out by the numbers this season -- Darvish has a 2.80 ERA and a 600 OPS allowed with Pierzynski catching him, compared to a 2.81 ERA and a 616 OPS with Soto -- but a disproportionate number of Soto's starts have come with Darvish on the mound.
Ron Washington is sticking with that combo today, as Soto is catching, with Pierzynski at DH. Usually, you wouldn't want a catcher at DH, but given that the other options the Rangers have right now are David Murphy, broken Lance Berkman, Jurickson Profar, Jim Adduci, and a couple of righthanders who shouldn't ever hit against righthanded pitching, Pierzynski is as good as anyone at DH.