Yu Darvish update: Darvish, Colby Lewis could be activated this week

Yu Darvish update:  Yu Darvish could be activated as soon as this weekend, with Colby Lewis being a candidate to be activated to start for the Rangers on April 6.

Evan Grant has an update on the status of Darvish and Lewis, with Jon Daniels saying that the Rangers could opt to have Darvish do either an extended bullpen session or a simulated game tomorrow, and potentially be activated for either the team's Sunday, April 6, game in Tampa, or Monday, April 7, in Boston.

It sounds like the decision will largely be left to Darvish, and will be dependent on how his session tomorrow goes, but if I were to bet, I'd say Darvish ends up starting in Boston on April 7.

Colby Lewis, meanwhile, is scheduled to pitch a minor league exhibition tomorrow, and if that goes well, he would be on track to start Sunday's game against the Rays.  The Rangers could purchase the contract of Nick Martinez on Saturday, have him start against Tampa, and then option him to AA Frisco the next day and purchase the contract of Lewis to take his place.  Darvish could then be activated on Monday to start against Boston.  That would slide the rest of the rotation back a couple of days, and also necessitate one of the current starting pitchers -- either Tanner Scheppers, Robbie Ross or Joe Saunders -- moving to the bullpen.

We should have a better idea what the game plan is after tomorrow, but at this point, I think there's a good chance that Lewis and Yu will be back in the next seven days, and I'd be pretty surprised if they aren't both on the active roster by tax day.