With Darvish's wins yesterday and 3-0 stat with the Rangers, I wanted to check out his prior stats.

His stats are awesome. But what has me wondering, is why in NPB are 95% of their gm totals at Pinny 4.5 to 5.5? Would that make pitchers with an ERA over 3 considered unsuccessful and batters hitting a low.250 considered successful? Are the pitchers just more dominant/not enough quality hitters?

Checking out wiki, they do use a smaller baseball, strike zone, and playing field.

Career statistics

Nippon Professional Baseball
Year Age Team W L W% GS CG SHO IP H R ER HR BB K ERA WHIP
2005 18 Nippon-Ham 5 5 .500 14 2 1 94.1 97 37 37 7 48 52 3.53 1.54
2006 19 12 5 .706 24 3 2 149.2 128 55 48 12 64 115 2.89 1.28
2007 20 15 5 .750 26 12 3 207.2 123 48 42 9 49 210 1.82 0.83
2008 21 16 4 .800 24 10 2 200.2 136 44 42 11 44 208 1.88 0.90
2009 22 15 5 .750 23 8 2 182 118 36 35 9 45 167 1.73 0.90
2010 23 12 8 .600 25 10 2 202 158 48 40 5 47 222 1.78 1.01
2011 24 18 6 .750 28 10 6 232 156 42 37 5 36 276 1.44 0.83
NPB Total 93 38 .710 164 55 18 1268.1 916 310 281 58 333 1259 1.99 0.98
Major League Baseball
2012 25 Rangers 3 0 1.000 4 0 0 26 26 8 7 0 15 24 2.42 1.58
MLB Total 3 0 1.000 4 0 0 26 26 8 7 0 15 24 2.42 1.58
Career Total 96 38 .716 168 55 18 1294.1 942 318 288 58 348 1283 2.00 1.00