It seems like a long time ago but three years ago Dice-K was a living legend, a near myth. Indeed, some baseball insiders had heard about him and in the first World Baseball Classic we got our first glimpse of the wonder of the far east, a diminiutive pitcher who threw in the high 90s and a proverbial kitchen sink of off speed stuff, sliders, curves, cutters, and even, at least alledgedly the "gyro ball" a pitch that sounded like it was out of a Dr. Seuss book. For sure Daisuke Matsuzaka to many here too good to be true, a pitcher who was treated like a god in japan was available to every american baseball team, at the right price, and it seems today it was too good. For sure, as Daisuke Matsuzaka goes onto the DL for the second time this year already with shoulder problems it's hard to say that the man has lived up to the myth and has made at least some question whether the Japanese model of baseball could ever translate to the rigors of the american game.
Daisuke Matsuzaka burst onto to the scene in Boston to quite a bit of fanfare for sure. Indeed, I remember going to spring training games in Fort Myers, FL the home of the red sox and I couldn't help but be amazed how many "Matsuzaka" shirts I saw on the backs of red sox fans, this guy had never even pitched a game for the Sox and they already adored the guy! As a rookie perhaps he didn't quite live up to the billing but he represented himself well of what was to come, leading the team in innings pitched and sporting a not so awful 4.40ERA striking out 201 in 204 innings but walking a pertty horrible 80 batters. For sure, from the early going you could see watching the man they called Dice-K was a troublesome and stomache-ache inducing event, throwing tons of pitches in a very deliberate manner walking guys like it was going out of style and constantly nibbling at the corners, never ever giving into the hitter. And yet somehow despite his especially infuriating style, it just worked, he somehow always managed to get out of the jams early on, and in truth it didn't matter much because the team was on a roll, crusing to an easy AL east title and despite falling behind the Indians in the ALCS, won that and the World Series, why worry? Plus the next year he was even better spotting a 2.90 ERA to go with a 18-3 win loss record, for sure they had the makings of an ace right? Well perhaps not as Dice-K's location problems only worsened, seeing his strikeout numbers plummet to 154 in 167 innings which walking a leage leading 94 batters, how? How did he seemingly always find a way out?
Well it appears that Matsuzaka's luck has run out early on this season as the former myth is looking very human and emantly hittable. Having a 8.91ERA 18 walks and 34 strikeouts in 35 innings Dice-K isn't fooling anyone and as many will tell you harder and harder to watch. Indeed, one friend of mine who's a red sox fan tells me he can watch a game where Dice-K pitches and check on two or three channels in between pitches, its just brutal. Now of course there is a possibility that he'll recover from these problems but the numbers don't seem to give him much hope. Three DL stints in two years, diminished strikeout numbers and increased walks, all signal to me that at the end of his contract, the Red Sox are going to be very very regretful to have invested 103 million into this guy and given his history it shouldn't be suprising. For sure, Matsuzaka has been the poster boy for the campaign against babying pitchers. Look at Dice-K he throws every day, works on little or no rest constantly and he's been fine look at him! Well as we can see now with the advantage of hindsight such talk is fool-hearty and shortsighted.
Perhaps he will turn it around or perhaps some other japanese pitcher will come over and be able to translate his dominance to the american game, but its looking less and less likely as time goes on. As two consecutive WBC titles will attest the japanese game is a good one and a succesful one at that, but if the Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Parks of the world have shown us anything its that it doesn't work in the long run, and in a time in baseball where players fight for the big long term contracts, that's not something owners will more and more be reluctant to give it a whirl.
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