A tired shoulder has sidelined Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters pitcher Yu Darvish since Aug. 22, following his worst outing of the season against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.
Darvish gave up six runs in eight innings of that loss and has since spent some time at the team's practice facility working on his form.
Before Darvish went down, he was the favorite to be crowned the Sawamura Award winner for the second time in three seasons.