Matsuzaka Watch

The End

2007-11-14T02:55:00.001+09:00

Hello again Matsuzaka Watch fans. This will be the final post at Matsuzaka Watch. I am a bit sad to be hanging up the work I've done here. It's been a lot of fun and has helped to bring new perspective on the Japanese game to a broad audience. It has also given me a new perspective and has produced a good deal of thought provoking ideas that need to be explored further.

Matsuzaka Watch started at my Yankees blog Canyon of Heroes on March 26, 2006 and was dedicated to bringing Yankee fans information about a dynamic pitching force from Japan. Ironically, the first comment attached to the post there comes from someone calling themselves Sawx Rule and reads, "Hey, I think you made a mistake in your picture. Shouldn't you have Matsuzaka in a Red Sox's uniform?" The post featured a poorly "Photoshopped" likeness of Daisuke in a Yankee uniform (see left).

On June 27, 2006 I moved the Canyon of Heroes content over to this blog, hoping to work more seriously on this project for a broader audience. That move was one of the best things I've done as a blogger, as my audience surged and my ability to discuss the Japanese sport with a larger number of readers became reality. My interview with BP's Will Carroll helped to introduce me to the Baseball Prospectus family and a regular column with them took off.

The posting process saw traffic at Matsuzaka Watch go through the roof. I recall people contacting me at 2-3am with e-mails about rumor A or rumor B. Yes, there were actually people who couldn't sleep as the days before the announcement approached. During that period, I played around with a few different banners for the winning bid. Check them out below:

I was prepared for most realistic contingencies here at MW, and when the news hit that the Red Sox had won the negotiating rights for Matsuzaka, I put up the final banner you see in that group. The current banner came soon after he officially signed and we were off to the races. The image of Daisuke in the current banner comes from the Asahi Beer photo shoots he did prior to heading wearing the Red Sox uniform on the field. I'd hoped that Daisuke would be wearing pinstripes, as you well know by now, and mocked up an action photo of him pitching for the Yankees. When the news came down about Boston, I had to change gears and rework my art to reflect the tough reality. See below:

This is a poorly mocked up version of Daisuke as a Yankee, which looks perfectly ridiculous right now. Secret: The uniform I used was from a Carl Pavano photo. That might explain the bad luck the Yanks had in the posting process.

Here's the Red Sox version. This uniform was Pedro's. Don't look too closely at the picture or you'll see the extra jersey I had to create on his right hip, shadows and all.

The season was full of hype, over-hype, excitement, disappointment, promise, and in the end the Red Sox won it all. This story had the complete range of elements to captivate an audience. There was drama (the posting), mythology (the gyroball), rising action (his strong debut and the Ichiro meeting), falling action (the poor close to the season), and a triumphant climax (World Series victory). I have a lot of optimism about Daisuke's 2008. He's the type of pitcher that will make the adjustment, and he proved in Japan that he was able to rise to the level of his competition. It took a number of years with Seibu before the flashes of brilliance translated to full time domination. I expect that you'll see something very special out of this pitcher before his contract is up.

As for me, I will continue my work at Baseball Prospectus. I will be continuing my various "Watch" blogs for other Japanese players, and I will be using Baseball Japan as my home base for everything related to the sport in Japan. In addition, I have a couple of more ambitious projects in the works that might eventually come to fruition and really provide the English-speaking fan with the resources they crave for following amateur and professional baseball across the ocean. Stay tuned at BP and at Baseball Japan for more, and don't be a stranger. My e-mail is still in the right margin at the top, and I will leave this blog here for posterity. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and see you around.

Mike Plugh

Quick Hook

2007-10-28T12:06:00.000+09:00

I think Daisuke got a little bit of a quick hook by Francona right there. He's been flirting with trouble a bit the last couple innings, but with a 6-0 lead, you have to give the man a chance to work out of it. He wasn't happy to come out of the game. All of Japan is watching and this was his moment to shine. This was the championship game of the WBC all over again for Daisuke and for the entire nation of Japan. For him to come out mid-inning was slightly deflating.

5.1 innings pitched looks a lot less impressive than 6 complete. Now Hawpe swings at the first pitch and gives up an earned run to Daisuke. That's horses*&t in baseball parlance. Our man got a seriously raw deal.

It's All Over But the Funeral...

2007-10-28T10:35:00.001+09:00

Top of the 3rd inning, bases loaded, Daisuke drives in 2 runs on his first Major League hit. 5-0 Red Sox. You can call the mortician. This series is over. Could the National League be any worse?

Congratulations Red Sox Nation! (As I type it is now 6-0.)

Daisuke's Last Start

2007-10-27T04:43:00.000+09:00

This will be the final start for Daisuke Matsuzaka in the 2007 season. I'm confident that the Sox will not need 7 games to win the World Series and take the lead in the race to become the team of this new century. As I see it, the Sox opened the 20th century by winning the series in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. Yes, it was 86 long and painful years until the team managed to win it again, but it will only be 3 short years between the most recent wins. The Red Sox will be the first team of the 21st century to win multiple World Series titles. There's no reason to believe that the franchise can't make a similar early century run at more championships, proving that this club is the class of the sport.

As a Yankee fan, I loathe to see the Red Sox playing in October. It makes my skin crawl. I'm no Rudy Giuliani. I know where my blood allegiances run. I'm also a baseball writer who wears his passion on his sleeve, but also wants to live in reality. The Sox collapsed in 2006 and Yankee fans rejoiced. I was not one of those Yankee fans. It scared me when the team went to Fenway and swept the Sox' season away last year. It was great in the short term, but these are not your father's Red Sox. There is a plan. It doesn't always work the way Theo wants (Drew, Lugo, Crisp), but it works more than it fails. The ownership is committed to spend. They should. With NESN and an entire region of the United States as a captive audience, the Red Sox have all the resources of the Yankees and have learned that using them may shake off the gritty, lovable underdog image that the team mired in for decades but it also makes them a champion. That's much better.

The Yankees are a team in turmoil. They'll be good every year because they spend and they've learned to build the farm aggressively. The problem is, this season is a failure on more than a baseball front. Joe Torre was one of the classiest ambassadors that the sport has seen in years. He was loved by almost every player to enter the clubhouse and the opposition as well. Papi even stuck up for Joe after the Yankees were eliminated. You have guys like Randy Levine and the Steinbrenner boys trying to figure out how to build a ballclub, if they even care about that. They strike me as bottom line first type people, where George was always a man committed to spending his money to win it all. The Sox may win multiple titles before we even get back to the Series.

That's my Yankee perspective. It's grim. For the rest of you, our there in Red Sox Nation, there is only glory ahead. One of the more disturbing turn of events from my perspective, which should make you smile, is that Matsuzaka and Okajima winning the championship will solidify the Red Sox as Japan's team. It has always been the Yankees since the days of Babe Ruth. Matsui is the darling of Yomiuri Giants fans in their 30's, 40's, 50's, and up. Matsuzaka is the darling of anyone younger and certainly every kid in the country. By winning it all, there will be a death knell for the future of the Yankees in Japan. It's all about Boston and the red, white, and blue.

When Matsuzaka came to the Sox, this wasn't how it was scripted. Yes, the World Series was in the picture, but Daisuke was supposed to be a fire-breathing dragon that helped to stand in front of the Red Sox army and lead the charge to the title. As the third starter, limping into the playoffs after a horrid end of the regular season, he's been mediocre at best. The last start against Cleveland was decent, but no one thinks Matsuzaka and 5 innings and celebrates. You want 7 innings and 10 Ks. You want a no doubt, lock down start that shuts the door on the series. I want to think we'll get that tonight, despite my allegiance to the Red Sox ultimate demise. This is the storybook ending that could shine a glimmer of hope for a better 2008 Matsuzaka. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Daisuke find it tonight. He will rise to the occasion and throw a gem. I have no empirical support for that guess. It's probably overly optimistic, but I don't care at this point. This is likely my last pre-game post and my last Daisuke prediction. I'm going to be a cheerleader and go with the following numbers:

7 IP
7 hits
1 walk
1 run
9 Ks

The Sox will win and finish the series off in 4 or 5 games. I'll be back when they do to put the cherry on top of the Matsuzaka Watch sundae. Thank you for following this interesting story for the last 2 years. It's been a great ride. Go Daisuke.

It's Winnin' Time, or...

2007-10-22T02:47:00.001+09:00

...it's dyin' time. Game 7. Big time pressure. Season on the line. Ultimately, Matsuzaka's legacy will be ignited by this single moment. If he's bad, and the Red Sox lose, it will take years of outstanding pitching to win back the fans he will lose in this moment. If he pitches great, and the Sox win, he will have found some measure of redemption after a troubled second half. A lot will be forgiven in this moment if he steps up. J.D. Drew had a bit of that redemption with his big grand slam last night. Will Daisuke hit a grand slam of his own, vaulting the Sox to the World Series? Will the Indians get the best of him yet again?

Win and I keep writing here. Lose and it will be one, maybe two, more posts before retiring.

7 IP
5 hits
4 walks
4 runs
6 Ks

Is that enough for a win? Ask the Red Sox offense.....

2nd Chances

2007-10-16T01:07:00.000+09:00

The Indian's Game Two victory has put an entirely new spin on the Red Sox position in the 2007 post-season, and a lot of weight has shifted onto the shoulders of Daisuke Matsuzaka. The fact is, had the Sox won Game Two and put themselves up 2-0 in the series, a lot less would be expected of the rookie pitcher tonight. The Tribe managed to gut out a tremendous win and put the specter of a long series into play. I'm still of the opinion that the Red Sox are going to win the World Series this season (and possibly next season as well). As a Yankee fan, I find that revolting, but this team is built exceptionally well. There are few holes in the roster, and what holes exist have hardly reared their heads this year (J.D. Drew).

A lot now depends on Matsuzaka. If he coughs up the game and puts the Sox in a 2-1 situation, you'd have to worry that Wakefield, Beckett, and Schilling would have to win two out of three against Byrd, Sabathia, and Carmona in order to send it to Game 7. In my opinion, you have a situation there in which the Indians seem to hold the advantage, if only by the slimmest of margins. It's debatable, but I don't think anyone in Red Sox Nation wants to find out about who's right and wrong. In that scenario, unless Francona were to change and pitch someone on short rest (Beckett), he'd be starting Matsuzaka again in a deciding Game 7. Hmmmm.....

All of it is moot if Daisuke wins tonight. How has he fared against Cleveland this year?

@ Fenway on May 30th (5.2 IP, 12 hits, no walks, 6 ER, 4 Ks) Grady Sizemore 2-run HR
@ Cleveland on July 24th (7 IP, 4 hits, 3 walks, 0 ER, 5 Ks)

It's a tale of two starts for Daisuke. One hideous late inning breakdown, punctuated by a Sizemore blast. One lights out, 7 inning, 98 pitch, shutout on the road. It's almost impossible to predict what we'll see from Daisuke tonight, but I'll give it a shot:

6 IP
8 hits
2 walks
3 ER
6 Ks
Garko or Hafner will play big roles in this game....

Just an off the cuff, gut prediction. Go get 'em Daisuke.

The Big Moment

2007-10-06T04:54:00.000+09:00

This is why the Red Sox paid $100 million. Daisuke in the playoffs. Frankly, it's the reason the Yankees spent unfortunate wads of money on Roger Clemens too. Of course you need the horses to get there, but the post-season is all about pitching, and not just pitching, dominant pitching.

This is a very big spot for Matsuzaka. He was shaky in the playoffs for Seibu over the years, but made his last start in a short series between the Lions and the SoftBank Hawks where he was matched up against Kazumi Saito. He won the game 1-0, and was absolutely unhittable all night long. That's what the Red Sox would like from Daisuke. One of the keys to this particular performance is the ability of Matsuzaka to get the Sox to the 8th inning with the lead. If he can go 7 strong, Boston can go to one of the setup men with the knowledge that Papelbon is available for 6 outs if need be. That's huge. That's the gift that Beckett bestowed upon his mates when he pitched the complete game shutout.

For his part, Daisuke will be facing the Angels for the first time. He has had his greatest success against ball clubs in their first hacks against him, so it bodes well. The only drawback is that I think Francona should have saved him for Game 3 in Anaheim. Matsuzaka's road numbers are better than his home19-5 record splits and he won the WBC MVP on the mound in Southern California. It probably makes no difference.

One piece of business is a quick peak at my pre-season projection for Matsuzaka, based on past performance and established translation methods. I ran two different sets of numbers in doing my analysis, the 2005 Seibu stats and last season's 2006 numbers. Here are my attempts and the real thing (keep in mind, I always said that the ERA projection was a run too low):

2005 projection
215 IP
185 Hits
16 HR
63 BB
200 K
2.74 ERA
1.154 WHIP
8.37 K/9
3.18 K/BB

2006 projection
17-4
187 IP
156 Hits
21 HR
39 BB
181 K
2.52 ERA
1.043 WHIP
8.71 K/9
4.64 K/BB

Actual numbers
15-12
204.7 IP
191 Hits
25 HR
80 BB
201 K
4.40 ERA
1.324 WHIP
8.84 K/9
2.51 K/BB

In retrospect, it would have been wiser to project Matsuzaka based on his 2003, 2004, and maybe 2005 numbers for this season. By 2005 and 2006 in Japan he had established a rhythm which allowed him to dominate everyone he faced. Prior to 2005, he was still figuring things out, as he was this season in Boston. You can see that the MLB numbers aren't terribly skewed from his 2005, but are quite a distance from the projection based on last season. What the two projections I provided may tell you, is that Matsuzaka has the upside to be what I have given you...again add a run to that ERA. I'm hoping you'll see Daisuke keep it together all season in 2008 and give you at least a 3.70 ERA, if not lower.

The game tonight is a tough one. I'm going to continue following my guts with my predictions. To the annoyance of some readers, I make my guesses by guts and a little feel for this player. I don't go through the trouble of real metrics-based crunching. I don't have time for it to be honest. I've been pretty good so far this year and will bring you an added up tally of every prediction to compare to the actual numbers. That will be fun. Here's the prediction:

7 IP
7 hits
2 walks
2 ER
7 strikeouts
115 pitches
Victory

Go Daisuke.

#15

2007-09-29T08:15:00.001+09:00

I'm late on this, but my buddy needs win #15 for a big payday. I've got out the Daisuke pom-poms and I'm going to predict:

8 IP
7 hits
2 walks
2 runs
10 Ks
WIN #15

Good luck Daisuke!!

Retirement

2007-09-23T12:00:00.000+09:00

Hard luck for Matsuzaka. I know someone who has some financial incentive in Daisuke getting 15 wins this year, and I'm feeling for him right now. Here's to one last start this regular season, probably against the Twins, and a 15th victory for our man. To my friend out there, you know who you are, I'm pulling for you big time.

With likely a single solitary start for Matsuzaka in the regular season and at least one in the postseason, I think it's time to announce the retirement of Matsuzaka Watch. When the Red Sox season comes to its natural conclusion, either in a champagne drenched locker room celebrating another title, or in more humble surroundings after a playoff defeat, I will hang up my Matsuzaka blog for good.

I've followed Daisuke on a start-by-start basis for 4 complete seasons now, and since his high school days from the periphery. Starting this blog was a way to reach out to the baseball-loving public and to turn fans of our national pastime on to the Japanese game via its most dynamic talent. Over the last two seasons, I have devotedly written about each Matsuzaka start, both with Seibu and the Red Sox, not to mention the World Baseball Classic. I've covered theoretical projections, analysis of various features of his workload in Japan, and I've argued tooth and nail with many doubters about his viability in the Major Leagues.

It has been interesting to me to watch the conversation transform itself from a very small group of interested fans to a swell of mania in the days of the posting process to a season of ups and downs for Matsuzaka as he's navigated the very different game in the Major Leagues. The conversation started with questions about Japan and the Japanese style of play, prospects headed to the Major Leagues, and heated debates with many people who were too narrow-minded to accept the possibility that every Japanese pitcher would not suffer the same fate as Hideki Irabu, Kazuhisa Ishii, and others. My approach has been a combination of my own enthusiastic fan's perspective, rudimentary metrics, first hand knowledge of the Japanese game, and consultation with people a lot smarter than me.

Thanks to the excitement generated by this blog I have been able to expand my coverage to include other dynamic players such as Yu Darvish, Yuki Saito, Sho Nakata, Kosuke Fukudome, Koji Uehara, and more. I have joined a team of outstanding baseball minds at Baseball Prospectus to cover Japan and hopefully increase the interest and knowledge of the universality of this game. In a way, I am proud that my efforts have contributed to broadening the understanding of Japan and Japanese culture as a result of our common love for baseball. I will continue to cover the Japanese game for BP as well as the many other blogs that have spun off from this effort.

I'll have some final words for you after the final out has been recorded for the Sox. There will be some housecleaning to do and some perspective to consider. I will leave you with some thoughts on his first season, his future, and some personal feelings about what this experience has meant to me. I will also leave you some links as a reminder of where to find my writing if you are interested in reading more. I will always find my outlet for writing about the Japanese game, and the sport in all its forms. Until the last out, stay tuned for regular coverage and keep your fingers crossed for win #15, for Daisuke, for the Sox, and for my unnamed friend......

D-Days

2007-09-23T00:42:00.000+09:00

The Yankees have miraculously made it interesting. The combination of wins and losses last night makes it 2.5 again, and Matsuzaka will look to essentially put a nail in the coffin of the Yankees AL East aspirations against the Rays. Hard to put a finger on which Matsuzaka we're going to see this week. He pitched back-to-back starts against the Rays in mid-August. Here are those lines:

8/15
6 IP
8 hits
3 walks
5 Ks
6 ER

8/22
6 IP
2 hits
4 walks
8 Ks
2 ER

I'll split the difference on today's prediction, since I'm out of ways to do this. My guess:

6 IP
5 hits
3 walks
7 Ks
4 ER

How's that? The question is, will that kind of start be enough to get the Sox an important win? I think, yes.

Spankees

2007-09-14T18:52:00.000+09:00

"Ugh. The Yankees again."

That's just what Matsuzaka must be thinking right now. Three straight starts have gone sour on Daisuke, and the rookie campaign is hurdling a bit out of control. Yankee fans have started their ritualistic mockery of #18 at this point, revising history by saying how much they hoped he wouldn't be in pinstripes. It’s funny to me that all the “told you so” crowd is coming out now when he’s struggled for 3 starts and seen his numbers inflate. When he had a mid-3s ERA and a 125 ERA+ a few weeks ago, no one was saying boo.

If you take the Yankees out of the equation, Matsuzaka's numbers are slightly better. To that point, let's look at his season with and without the Bombers.

Against the Yankees
19.1 IP
19 hits
8 walks
16 Ks
3 HR
15 ER
6.98 ERA
1.40 WHIP

Season minus Yankees
165 IP
156 hits
62 walks
76 ER
20 HR
163 Ks
4.15 ERA
1.32 WHIP

Those numbers are only slightly better than his season totals, but when you consider that 6.98 ERA into the equation, he gets into trouble. Baltimore and Texas have also really cuffed Daisuke around, and hurt an otherwise outstanding stat line. With his recent struggles, Daisuke has posted a 103 ERA+ on the year, which will continue to delight Yankee fans and naysayers. $100 million for a league average pitcher. Nice work Theo.

I'll never be in that camp. This is a world class pitcher, who needs to adjust. If Daisuke can do it in the postseason and learn enough to make adjustments in the offseason, you'll see the investment start to bubble over the next 2-3 seasons. If he fizzles against NY again, and then (God forbid) gets smacked around in the playoffs (God forbid against NY), Bostonians will turn on him faster than you can bat an eye. Keep the faith folks.

6 IP
6 hits
3 walks
8 Ks
3 runs
118 pitches

I'm betting that it won't be pretty against NY, but that our hero will escape a few jams. He's only got a .253 BAA with the Yankees, so it's not like he's getting smoked.

Buried Birds

2007-09-09T01:53:00.001+09:00

No contest.

8 IP
6 hits
2 walks
0 runs
11 Ks

Great bounce back start and a run at 15 wins. The stretch belongs to Daisuke....

Back in NYC

2007-09-06T08:44:00.000+09:00

Hey MW fans.

I'm fluctuating between access and no access to the internet these days as I get my life set up back home in NYC. I'll be in the US, in NYC, for at least a year. Japan is a part time thing in the short term, with several trips lined up this year.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get myself back in full operational mode with respect to the net, e-mail, and blogging. I missed the last prediction, but I'll make sure to be there for the next. You'll also see a few more lengthy features in the near future as I reconnect with some of the folks in the blogosphere, on the beat, and at BP.

Stay Tuned/

Pinstriped Glasses

2007-08-28T23:01:00.000+09:00

Okay. The division is Boston's. I concede. The playoffs are within reach for the Yankees, if only because Seattle has stumbled at the same time the wheels have fallen off the Bombers' wagon. They also play a much tougher September. As a Yankee fan, I have to hope for a big series against the Sox to keep hope alive. I apologize for betting against our favorite Japanese import here, but it's killing time or its dying time and I gotta put my best judgment aside in favor of blind, stupid hope.

Matsuzaka versus Pettitte

5 IP
9 hits
4 walks
7 runs
5 strikeouts

I'm sure he'll pitch a complete game shutout on 5 hits and a single walk with 11 Ks, but I'm a fan and I'm going to wear my underwear backwards and my rally cap tonight. Sigh.

Ray-venge

2007-08-23T03:05:00.000+09:00

Surprisingly, Daisuke was lit up by the young Devil Rays in his last outing. I say "surprisingly" because the Rays have taken a real nosedive this month, often struggling to score runs. The outburst against Matsuzaka in his last start was one of the few games in recent weeks when the Manta Rays were able to put any runs on the board. It won't happen again.

I'm going to use my last Daisuke versus the Skates prediction again. I'm sure I'll get it right this time. I was just ahead of myself.

7 IP
7 hits
2 walks
2 runs
8 Ks

The Yankees will lose again in Anaheim and the division will be all but sewn up at the end of the night.

Ray of Hope

2007-08-15T23:40:00.000+09:00

Thanks to the Devil Rays, the Red Sox are putting a disappointing series against the O's to bed. The Rays look fair on paper and always give me hope that they will emerge from the cellar of the AL East one day, but in reality they are just awful. Matsuzaka is looking to get that elusive 14th win against the bumbling rays today and doesn't have to face the opposing team's ace on this occasion.

This is a good opportunity to continue to lower his ERA and increase both his VORP and ERA+ to help his statistical case for those who follow such things. Right now, Daisuke's VORP stands at about 42 and his ERA+ is 126. Those numbers are excellent and are helping to make Theo's case for splashing on the posting fee. I was looking at Daisuke's stats, comparing them to the other pitchers in the Majors with at least 100 innings pitched. He is near the top of the league in several categories, but hasn't cracked the upper echelon of pitchers in baseball yet, mainly due to the walks he's allowed so far. His K-rate is over 9, but that is offset by a lot of free passes. It's the same story every time when discussing Daisuke's shortcomings, but the walks have prevented him from being truly elite. Carlos Zambrano is similar in the respect that both men throw upwards of 110 pitches per start. Those starts rarely go beyond 6+ innings because both men waste a ton of pitches to get their big strikeout totals. Both men are very young, as far as starting pitching goes, and need to learn to forgo the strikeout in favor of a few easier outs. As they get older their success will depend on it.

For now, the Rays are looking to get to Daisuke quickly in this game. They are starting Andy Sonnanstine, who is 1-8 with a 6.35 ERA. The Sox offense could stake Matsuzaka to a big lead early and it will be smooth sailing from there. I imagine that will be the case and I also imagine that you'll see Gagne get back on the horse in this game and he'll pitch lights out.

7 IP
7 hits
2 walks
2 runs
8 Ks

Ornithologically Correct

2007-08-11T06:13:00.000+09:00

Loyal readers know that I'm a Yankee fan. As a group, Red Sox fans and the many Yankee fans that drop by to read my work here are intimately familiar with the AL East. The fact is, with the exception of a few odd years, the Sox and the Yanks have been the class of the division and have seen little in the way of stiff competition from the other clubs since the early 90's. The Jays occasionally jump up to surprise, but the Orioles and the Rays have been laughing stocks for longer than I care to remember right now.

As a Yankee fan, I see the Orioles as a sad case of poor investments coupled with mind-bogglingly unconscious management. The owner is in denial, the parade of decision-makers haven't made very good decisions, and the farm is dry. Whenever the Bombers head to Camden they are greeted by droves of Yankee fans in the stands. This happens in a lot of markets with respect to both the Yankees and the Sox, but nowhere does the phenomenon hold truer than Baltimore in recent years.

This is a once proud franchise that can boast a number of history's greatest teams and many of its most celebrated players. These days that is easy to forget as good teams travel to the Inner Harbor to enjoy crab cakes, beer, and scoring obscene amounts of runs against the O's. The Red Sox are in town to do some damage and try to stretch the lead in the division a bit after seeing the Yankees gain ground while feasting on the runts of the litter in the AL. Matsuzaka gets Bedard in what promises to be the most compelling game of the series.

Despite playing in one of the best hitters parks in the sport, the Orioles are an abysmal offensive club. The OBP is fair, but the Orioles don't hit for power and are generally only able to score runs by scrapping via the single or walk and the stolen base. Essentially, the Baltimore boys are a station to station ballclub. The only threat that these birds offer Daisuke is the potential for a big day on the basepaths. Steals are a problem for Matsuzaka and baserunners have seemed to bother him all year long. That said, I just don't see the Orioles having enough to beat our hero. Here's my prediction:

7+ IP
7 hits
3 walks
3 runs
9 Ks

There is the potential here for a stellar game, however. I think there is an 8 inning, double digit K, shutout performance lurking in this situation, but I'll stick with my prediction above. Go Matsuzaka, go!

Seatown Redux

2007-08-05T09:57:00.000+09:00

I'm in the US finally. I have little time to get my prediction in before gametime, but I'll post a quick one now. From here until the rest of the season, I hope to be more active at MW and write a bit more frequently.

For today, let's base our prediction on the past performances Daisuke's had against the Pilots....er...Mariners.

3 games
20 IP
16 hits
7 walks
11 ER
13 Ks
4.95 ERA
1.15 WHIP
.216 BAA

The big ERA is mainly a product of a drubbing on May 3rd when he gave up 7 runs and 5 walks in 5 innings pitched. I think he'll be very good tonight and give the Sox 7 solid innings. Here goes:

7 IP
5 hits
2 walks
2 runs
7 strikeouts

Good luck....

D-Rays Blitz Post

2007-07-29T18:43:00.000+09:00

I'm in rural Nagano Prefecture, hooked up with wireless. Here goes. Just guts. No real analysis.

8 IP
7 hits
2 walks
1 run
11 Ks
125 pitches

Kick ass Daisuke!

(Bad) Luck of the Draw

2007-07-24T14:03:00.000+09:00

It seems our boy keeps getting the bad draw when it comes to opposing team's aces. The Indians figure to be a tough team to beat on any given night, but especially when their hefty lefty is on the hill. C.C. Sabathia has always been a top quality pitcher, but has really come into his own the last two seasons. Fortunately for the Red Sox, Sabathia is coming off two horrible starts and hasn't looked at all effective in July. If that trend continues, the Sox will jump on him early and often and Matsuzaka can earn himself a little cushion.

The Sox haven't seen C.C. this year, and only got him once in 2006. Sabathia went 8 strong, giving up a single run on a homer by Mark Loretta. Things could get ugly in this situation for the Tribe, as the Sox are among the best teams in the sport at mashing lefties. Boston hits home runs at slightly better than the league average rate against southpaws and hold an impressive .816 OPS against them.

Matsuzaka hasn't pitched well in July after a great June. Things seem to spin out of control when he begins his nightly foray into wasted pitches. It's been common to see Daisuke get ahead 0-2 and 1-2 on batters and then throw pitches above eye level and outside. No one is going to swing at those pitches. The key, as is always the case, will be for Matsuzaka to remain efficient against a team that is 4th in the Major Leagues in on base percentage and scores at a clip only rivaled by the Phillies, Tigers, Red Sox, and Yankees. Can he put together enough control to overwhelm the powerful Indians lineup?

I'm going to predict that Sabathia is lights out early but falters somewhere in the 6th or 7th inning. Matsuzaka will give up some early runs in this game and settle down late. The key will be Boston's ability to score given the chance against a tiring Sabathia and steal victory from the jaws of defeat.

7 IP
9 hits
3 walks
4 runs
7 strikeouts
119 pitches

Hectic Days

2007-07-23T10:06:00.000+09:00

Hello MW readers (that means you mom)....

I'm in the midst of some big changes these days. I'm setting up life between the US and Japan right now and it's a major undertaking. Those who keep living space on both the East and West Coasts of the United States are generally referred to as "bi-coastal" although I'm not sure what nomenclature would be chosen for my situation.

At any rate, I will be headed back to the friendly confines of New York City in early August, keeping a place in Akita City. During the next 2-3 weeks I'm afraid my blogging will be inconsistent, although I should be able to find enough access to both baseball and the internet to update here often. If I end up AWOL for several days without an update, rest assured that I will be back into the full swing of things by the 2nd week of August as a full time blogging maniac again.

Thanks for your patience and for always supporting what I do here. Keep checking back!!

Mike Plugh

Moving Day

2007-07-19T17:11:00.000+09:00

I'm in the middle of moving right now, but Matsuzaka Watch is just that committed. Here's a quick prediction. The White Sox are garbage. Matsuzaka is coming off a couple of shaky performances. We get to see some vintage Daisuke to the tune of:

9 IP
4 hits
1 walk
0 runs
12 Ks
125+ pitches

Just a gut feeling. I will probably regret that prediction later.....Gotta move. See you on the flip side true believers....

Fausto Impressions

2007-07-13T13:21:00.001+09:00

So much for the big test against the Tigers. One has to allow for the type of outing that Daisuke had against the Tigers prior to the All Star Break, as there is no better offense in the sport than the Motown Cats. It's easy to set our expectations high for Matsuzaka based in part on reputation and in part on the type of results we've seen over the course of the last month or so. There are a few statement games that appear in a season that you hope your man will step up and prove himself to show the world what he's made of. It wasn't to be for Matsuzaka in this game, but there will be more to come.

Meanwhile, the third go round against Toronto is on the horizon. The lineup looks different up North compared to the last time the Jays and Red Sox faced off with Daisuke on the hill. Vernon Wells is presently occupying the leadoff spot and the Blue Jays are getting a little more from Frank Thomas as well. Daisuke has had some success against the AL East's 2nd place club so far in his career with a 2.08 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and .170 BAA in 13 innings of work. He's struck out 18 in those two contests, but has also worked himself into trouble with 6 walks. The man to watch in this contest is All Star Alex Rios, who is having a second consecutive monster season. Against Daisuke so far, Rios is 3-6 with a walk and a double. His OPS against Matsuzaka is 1.238 in limited action.

The Cleveland Indians Fausto Carmona just beat Toronto a few days ago. He has very similar numbers to Daisuke on the season with the exception of strikeouts. Matsuzaka is in another class altogether. Our man also has a much longer track record of success than Carmona, so we can project a slightly better result based on superior strikeout ability and a better feel for the game. Basing my prediction on the results that Fausto produced, tweaking for a superior Matsuzaka, I'm going with the following.....

7 IP
6 hits
2 runs
3 walks
8 strikeouts
120 pitches

2007-07-08T22:55:00.000+09:00

Too busy to be creative tonight. I'm going lightning style with my prediction. Tigers are first in baseball with a team .290 average, 3rd with a .352 OBP, and first with a .471 slugging mark. They lead the 2nd place Indians by 35 runs scored on the season. There offense is goofy. Dangerous business.

6 IP
8 hits
4 runs
2 walks
7 Ks
114 pitches

Good luck Daisuke!!

Hot Stuff

2007-07-03T20:15:00.000+09:00

So it would seem that Duke Saraie had the right recipe to help Daisuke get the walking right after all, huh? Nice work Duke. I thought I'd try to give another boost to our hero as he's about to take on another AL East club with a budding lineup of very nice players. To keep Matsuzaka hot, I nabbed hip hop/R&B singer Kumi Koda to perform her smash hit "Hot Stuff" for the Matsuzaka Watch audience. Koda is famous for providing scores and images to several of the Final Fantasy chapters, as well as for pioneering the "Ero-kakkoii" trend among her young fans. "Ero-kakkoii" is a combination of the words "erotic" and "cool" and anyone who has seen any of her work understands why it caught on.

Anyway, she's here via the magic of YouTube to kick off our coverage of the next Matsuzaka start. Let's hope our hero stays hot and can deliver a big performance against the Rays. With no further ado, I give you "Hot Stuff" from Kumi Koda:

Uh. I forgot to ask her anything about Daisuke. Yeah. Hmmmmm.....Guess I have to field this one on my own. I'll go with:

7 IP
5 hits
2 runs
2 walks
9 K

You can close your mouth now.

Dukeswalk

2007-06-27T15:03:00.000+09:00

If you had to put your finger on one problem that Daisuke has had this year, it's easy. He walks too many batters and wastes too many pitches in doing so. Looking at the monthly splits on Daisuke's numbers, June has proved to be his best month. Perhaps, his recent success can be attributed to facing NL clubs in 3 of the 4 contests he's started this month, 2 of those in NL parks where the DH takes a vacation.

April - 4.36 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, .242 BAA, 10.36 K/9, 2.73 BB/9
May - 5.22 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, .280 BAA, 6.81 K/9, 2.50 BB/9
June - 1.73 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, .196 BAA, 11.77 K/9, 4.85 BB/9

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Hold on for just a second. You mean to tell me that Daisuke had his best month of the season while allowing nearly 5 walks per 9 innings? How can that be? I suppose one theory is that batters made much more contact in May. Matsuzaka allowed a .280 batting average to hitters, and only struck out a very average 6.81 batters per nine. He was hittable. In June, despite missing more frequently, he prevented batters from making contact and kept them from driving in runs. Eventually, something like that is going to catch up to you. You can't expect to put yourself into jam after jam and wriggle out of it with a few well timed strikeouts.

I've enlisted "walking guru" Duke Saraie to help me figure out how Daisuke can get his "walking" under control and his dominance of batters back in line with his Seibu days. Duke is a 50-something former fashion model, who now splits time between his home in Monaco and his native Japan. His claim to fame these days is his fitness and wellness program called "Dukeswalk", in which participants engage in all manner of strenuous and contorted walking styles to unleash their inner confidence and tone their outer frame. Saraie, pronounced "sah-RAH-ee-ay", has been a staple on the Japanese variety television circuit over the last few years, and is kind of a cult guru for the young and restless.

When I asked Duke what he thought could get Matsuzaka back on track, he laughed boisterously and told me that he could work out the kinks in Daisuke's game with one quick training session in Dukeswalk. He recommended the "torso walk," arguably Duke's best-known exercise. It has been described thus: With your arms raised and crossed above your head and palms joined so that you look like a church steeple, you zigzag along, waving your "spire" and saying "Shyoot, shyoot!" as you go. By the magic of YouTube, I present you with a short peek into the genius of Duke Saraie and the famous "torso walk". The clip is just some random Japanese guy in his office, but you get the point:

Saraie promised that he'd work on this technique with Daisuke before his Seattle start, to improve on his pitch count. I'll take him at his word, and I'll also let his prediction stand as my own this go around.

8 IP
9 hits
3 runs
1 walk
6 strikeouts

The Mariners are last in MLB in walks, so it gives the Duke a little boost in his prediction, but Daisuke has walked 6 batters over 12 innings against Seattle this year and he's given up 10 runs. The Mariners are one of the best hitting teams in baseball, so we might see a short scoring outburst at some point. I think Saraie's "torso walk" will get Matsuzaka to pitch more economically, so 8 innings seems like a good bet. Less strikeouts as well. Hmmmmm.......I might have to tack another run onto that prediction myself and go with 4, but he's the genius, right?

Boom! Boom! Boom!

2007-06-22T21:25:00.000+09:00

This week's prediction comes directly from a personal favorite of mine, Go Hiromi. Mr. Go is a former teen idol, now in his early 50's and still going strong. Think of him as a kind of post-Miami Vice Don Johnson meets Ricky Martin and you have this wonderful "artist" down cold. Before we get to the prediction, you should check out the latest from this transcendent artist via the magic of YouTube. Ah.....if only there were more like this!

Boom! Boom! Boom! is the name of the new single and Boom! Boom! Boom! come the strikeouts for Daisuke against the Padres. Only the Marlins strike out more than San Diego and only the White Sox have a lower team batting average. The only saving grace for the "Fathers" is that they know how to take a walk. Hiromi told me that the walks will put Daisuke in a few jams, but the strikeout will save him in the end.

7 IP
5 hits
4 walks
2 runs
12 Ks

(Do yourself a favor and watch the clip at least until he starts to dance at about :52 remaining. You won't be sorry.)

As Advertised

2007-06-16T20:12:00.000+09:00

Before I make my game prediction, there's a little business to do with regard to Matsuzaka. You've obviously seen the Asahi Super Dry beer ads that Matsuzaka has been featured in, and maybe you've had a look at the Toyota ad that ran a few months ago. Chances are, you missed the Aquarius Sports Drink ad that has been running in Japan lately. Actually there are two versions of the ad. You can watch them at the Aquarius website, as well as the "making of" video clips that might be of interest to you. Coca Cola produces Aquarius among other sports drinks and ion replenishing beverages. Coke has a relationship with MLB so you see the MLB logo in the commercials and drinks like Aquarius, unique to Japan, can also market themselves using MLB licensing.

What you see in the banner ad above is a note about a couple of Aquarius-related contests going on now. The bottom box tells you about the chance to win tickets to the September series against the Yankees, with seating up on the Green Monster.

In Japan, it's popular to put little giveaways on the tops of sodas and beverages to entice the thirsty masses to choose one drink or the other. Recently, the sports drink category of Coca Cola Japan has been giving away little MLB team towels with their drinks, pressure shrunken and neatly packaged in a little plastic hang tag around the necks of the bottles. I've been trying to find a Yankees towel, but can't seem to get one for the life of me. I stick my head into the refrigerator unit and remove each and every bottle with these "gifts" and can only seem to manage Tampa Bay, San Diego, St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and a couple of Red Sox. Here you'll see a Red Sox towel being used as a drip catcher for a convenience store "hot pot".

Aquarius is a very thirst quenching beverage that has that unmistakable sports drink taste. Kind of coats your tongue activating salivation. I drink it fairly often and enjoy it a lot. The Matsuzaka ads are a little over the top with CG of fire engulfing the mound and water bursting from Daisuke's pitching hand, scorching the dirt and peeling it apart. You know the genre. What's interesting to me is the Pepsi counter attack to the Matsuzaka campaign. Check it out below:

Prediction: 7 IP, 6 hits, 1 walk, 1 run, 10 strikeouts

If that looks familiar, it's because it's the exact pitching line that Daisuke produced in his debut against KC. The Giants' offensive metrics are actually slightly worse than KC across the board, in part thanks to the pitcher batting, but they are bad offensively. Watch our man dominate.

Baseball Prospectus Chat

2007-06-14T19:47:00.000+09:00

Greetings Matsuzaka Watch readers.

I will be hosting a chat at Baseball Prospectus on Thursday, June 14th at 12pm ET. For most of you that's today. For me, it's actually a 1am start on the 15th, so I'll be able to tell you all about the future.

Join me for a little Q&A and tell your friends. The more the merrier. I'll be ready to answer your questions about Japanese baseball, and hopefully anything else you might have on your mind about the current crop of Japanese players in the Major Leagues.

Thursday, June 14th and 12pm ET. Be there.

Huh?

2007-06-13T14:44:00.000+09:00

I just enjoyed my lunch here at work, and managed to survive the humid weather while I browsed the box scores by partaking in a thirst quenching new beverage from Pepsi. This is not in any way shape or form related to Daisuke Matsuzaka, but far too bizarre and quirky to keep to myself.

Pepsi Japan is clearly run by the insane. I know there are certain things that are unique to cultures around the world, including local tastes and seasonings. In India they don't eat beef, so Mickey-D's serves lamb burgers. The Dutch love jars of herring in cream sauce. There are some cultures that eat beetles and grubs. The Japanese love....well........see for yourself:

In case you didn't get a good enough look at that bottle, I will provide you with a closeup view to help your eyes adjust. For those of you who have been drinking, double check this in the morning and you will find that it wasn't a hallucination.

I'm sure some wise soul will point out that Dr. Brown's has been producing a very successful line of soft drinks for year, which not only offers Cream Soda but also the subtle palate of Celery Soda. I like Celery Soda. It's been around for a very long time and has had a chance to work its way into a nice little niche at delis around the NorthEast United States. That's Celery. This is Ice Cucumber. Not just cucumber, but ICE cucumber. You know ICE. It's that made up taste that you can find in Gatorade and Shaving Lotion and Mouthwash and Windshield Wiper Fluid. Combine that with cucumber and you have a surefire hit with the kids. Hell, next I'm going to make Ice Teriyaki Soda and then Ice Beet Juice. Maybe I can market the opposite sensation. FIRE. Kind of a cinnamon spin on the whole thing. I'll be rich. Fire Bacon. Fire Kim Chee. Or, SMOKED. Smoked Chicken with Flavor Crystals........

No wonder Matsuzaka got sick a few starts ago. He was among the focus group for this mess. Someone call Interpol.

Update: My aunt sent me this article from AOL Money News about the product starring in this post. Didn't believe me? Yes, it's terrifyingly true. I'm on the look out for Ice Cauliflower today.

Walk This Way

2007-06-11T10:01:00.000+09:00

The walk. It'll kill you. There is no more damaging part of the game for a team than the issued walk. You may say the home run is more damaging, except that a home run can occur on the first pitch of an at bat. Yes, it puts a run on the board, so there's an argument, but the walk can become something that spirals out of control. You throw more pitches. You lose the plate. You work out of the stretch. You make your teammates sit back on their heels waiting for something to happen. You get more and more tired, giving each successive batter a better chance at a mistake that will cost you more than a single run. Oh, the walk.

The base on balls has been Matsuzaka's cement collar this season. The rest of his game is getting better and better and you can see that he is All World under the mysterious control issues. He strikes out some of the game's best players multiple times in a game and he sometimes makes them look foolish in doing so. The game of baseball is also very fickle. Consider Matsuzaka's last 2 starts:

13 IP
11 hits
6 BB
17 K
4 ER
2 losses

Looking more closely at the ratios for those performances you see that Daisuke has put up:

2.76 ERA
1.308 WHIP
11.77 K/9
2.83 K/BB
7.62 H/9
4.20 BB/9

The high pitch counts and the struggles he has in certain innings come from the walks. Everything negative in his pitching line comes from walking batters. 11.77 K/9 is nuts. (It's also one of the factors that helps him escape from tough spots he creates.) On the season, Matsuzaka has an 8.92 K/9 ratio, which is outstanding. The ability is there. The control is not. That said, you have to win a game in which your starter gives you a "quality start". 6 innings and 2 runs is a winnable game, but the Sox offense has stayed behind in Boston as the team has played out West. On the West Coast swing, the Sox scored 22 runs in 7 games, which is 3.14 runs per contest. That isn't winning baseball. That's pi. If you take out the big 10-3 win against Arizona in the first game of the current series, you have 12 runs in 6 games, which is easily calculated to a measly 2 runs per outing. Ouch.

Maybe the travel day will reunite the Sox with their luggage...er....offense and the team can get the bats back together. The Yankees are only a razor thin 9.5 back now. Uh....yeah. There's no place like home.

Beat "Arizona" Takeshi

2007-06-10T20:11:00.000+09:00

Thanks to Hiroko Ota, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy, I was able to provide another stunningly accurate prediction for Daisuke Matsuzaka's last start. Continuing the trend of celebrity guests, I've enlisted famous Japanese film director, actor, and all around personality Beat Takeshi to make the latest guess. Here's what he had to say:

................

Yeah. At first he just kind of stared at me for a few minutes. Then, he had this to say:

"Win."

Mmmm hmmmm.

"Lots of strikeouts."

Yup.

"No walks."

Great.

"Lots of blood and screaming."

No. No. No. You're going to far. Just stick to baseball. This is real. No surrealism.

"A dog will bark in the distance and then a speeding police car will crash through the centerfield fence, followed by an ambulance."

Stop. This is about real baseball. Daisuke Matsuzaka vs. Randy Johnson. Red Sox and Diamondbacks.

....................

Do you have anything for me?

.....................

Is this it?

8 IP, 5 hits, no walks, 1 run, 9 strikeouts

Thanks. I'll go with that. Best start to date.

Cabinet Predictions

2007-06-05T21:00:00.001+09:00

I was fortunate enough (in the cozy environs of my own imagination) to spend some time with several members of Prime Minister Abe's Cabinet as they left a recent meeting in Tokyo. Several of the ministers took a minute or two to weigh in on Matsuzaka and even offered a few predictions about his next start versus Oakland. Here's what they had to say:

Taro Aso - Minister of Foreign Affairs

Exporting a talent like Daisuke is a wonderful gesture by the Japanese people to the baseball fans of your country. If all goes well, we will be mass producing these pitchers in miniaturized form and sending more of them for you to consume. Of course, the gyroball is a national treasure. That will stay behind.

vs. Oakland
9 IP, no hits, no walks, no runs, 27 strikeouts

Tetsuzo Fuyushiba - Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

The posting of Daisuke Matsuzaka eased the burden of one high priced young whippersnapper on the infrastructure. For what it cost us to support Mr. Matsuzaka's needs in Japan we can now afford to pay for 10 new whaling ships. Huzzah.

vs. Oakland
7 IP, 7 hits, no walks, no runs, 7 strikeouts

Masatoshi Wakabayashi - Minister of the Environment

Whaddya say? Matsu-whatsit? You'll have to speak up. If you're referring to the boy from Yokohama High School, I think he'll be a fine pro. I hope he plays for the Giants. America, you say? Never signed on to the Kyoto Protocols. Also, I don't like those Hollywood pictures these days. Too many effects and not enough story. When I was a young man.....

vs. Oakland
Don't you mean Philadelphia Athletics?

Koji Omi - Minister of Finance

I don't know much about base..........ball. Fact of the matter is, I'm much more of shogi fan myself. Cleats irritate my corns. Matsuzaka-san certainly provided a boost to the economy though. With Seibu sinking into the abyss of financial uncertainty, a certain Boston-based benefactor, who will remain nameless, decided to bail them out with a hefty contribution. Uh...yes. The Red Sox. Who told you that?

vs. Oakland
14 IP, 112 hits, 12 "four balls", 10,000 runs, no strikeouts

Hiroko Ota - Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy

Well, right now we've only seen Matsuzaka's rawest ability. Early on his VORP is only 9.6, behind Beckett, Schilling, and Wakefield among starters. His Defense Independent ERA, adjusted for All Time, is 4.46. I expect to see him build on some early success, and get his ERA+ numbers back into positive territory. He's not a 93. That said, he's not as cute as Yuki Saito.

vs. Oakland
8 IP, 6 hits, 2 walks, 2 ER, 10 strikeouts

As for me, I'm going with Minister Ota's prediction. She was right about Pedroia, too. She said he'd hit when everyone else was beginning to doubt. Go Daisuke!!

Hate to Say, "I Told You So"

2007-05-31T10:12:00.000+09:00

But, I told you so. The Tribe is powerful and probably the most legitimate threat to Boston in the AL this season. The pitching isn't quite the same caliber as the Sox, but they can flat out mash with the best of them. Matsuzaka was bound to have some problems today, but as a fan and a long time observer of Daisuke, I have to think that the illness also affected his between starts routine a bit. He likes his consistent workouts, and food poisoning will disrupt just about anything short of bed rest. No excuses, he stunk up the joint. His ERA is now 4.83 and he'll need a very strong June to get himself back to a respectable three-point-something.

My prediction was actually pretty close. Actual with my prediction in parentheses:

5.2 IP (7 IP)
12 hits (9)
no BB (3)
4 K (7)
1 HR (2)
6 ER (5)

Daisuke threw 106 pitches in less than 6 innings. 73 of them were for strikes, so you have to wonder if he should have worked a bit more carefully to a few of the Indians. He didn't walk anyone today, but he allowed 13 baserunners with the HBP of Garko. I had him at 12 baserunners on the day. More analysis and fallout from Japan as the news spreads that he was hit hard today....

Quick Prediction

2007-05-30T20:41:00.000+09:00

7 IP
9 hits
2 HR
3 BB
7 K
5 ER

I hate to say I have a bad feeling about this game, but I have a bad feeling about this game. The Indians are tied for 2nd in the Majors with the Red Sox for runs scored. They are 2nd in OBP, just behind the Sox. The Tribe is 4th in SLG and 6th in home runs. Fortunately for Daisuke, the Indians are also 4th in strikeouts. If he catches the Injuns on an off day he might tally double digits in Ks and walk away with a lights out win. If the Indians are in good form it could get ugly. I question how strong Daisuke is after his bout with food poisoning. Was his workout as rigorous as it normally is? Did he lose a little strength? Is he going to need another week to get back to 100%? We'll see. I'm going with the pessimistic prediction. Let's see.

Back in the Saddle

2007-05-28T13:14:00.000+09:00

Just back from Italy, I find our hero 7-2 and sitting on top of the world. I also find my Yankees 12.5 games back of the Red Sox, buried and left for dead. I hesitate to say it's over, but let's face it. It's over. The Sox are such a good ball club that the Yankees would have to hire someone to pull a Nancy Kerrigan on the entire starting rotation to have a prayer. The wild card is an 8 game uphill battle, so it's possible that all the laughing that Yankee fans did when the Sox fell into 3rd place in 2006 will be revisited on them. The Yankees are the worst, most expensive team ever.

The Red Sox, on the other hand, seem to have spent very wisely on several fronts. J.D. Drew is neither here nor there, and Lugo has been a disappointment on a number of levels. That said, Beckett has recouped some of the value he lost last season when he gave up a load of home runs, Okajima has been a gem, and Matsuzaka is rounding into form as an ace-in-the-making.

Rather than go over the details of the last two Matsuzaka outings, of which I only saw a few innings, I'll take a moment to recap his season to date with a few comments.

In his 10 starts to date Matsuzaka has put up the following numbers:

67 IP (6.2 inning per start)
1058 pitches (106 per outing)
62 hits (8.3 hits per 9)
21 walks (2.8 walks per 9)
64 strikeouts (8.60 K/9)
4.43 ERA
1.24 WHIP
3.05 K/BB
.244 BAA
.311 OBA

Looking at what he did for Seibu last season, it's noteworthy that Daisuke walked 33 batters in 186+ innings. This season he's already walked 21 in only 67 innings. The OBA for Matsuzaka at Seibu was .240, but is up around .311 now. You can look at that one factor in determining why his ERA is so high, and his K/BB ratio is merely decent rather than world class. If you extend the numbers out to 200 innings pitched, Matsuzaka should reach about 190 strikeouts. He'd also hit around 62 walks, which is nearly double his total last year. If he doesn't get the control problems worked out, you can expect that he'll continue to give up runs.

I went back and checked out the PECOTA projection for Daisuke this year and found that he is projected to post a 3.83 ERA with a 1.26 WHIP. That's looking very good right now. With the Red Sox offense and solid pen, the 14-7 projection may need to be adjusted up. Daisuke could easily win 16-18 games at this pace. According to Baseball Reference, Matsuzaka's current ERA+ is exactly 100, which means he is exactly league average. The challenge for the next 10 games will be to reduce the walks, which will in turn reduce the baserunners, which will in turn reduce the runs allowed, which will in turn lower the ERA and help the team win some games. I expect that Daisuke will do just that and his next 10 games will be somewhere in the low 3's in terms of ERA and his WHIP will be closer to 1.100 over that stretch.

Next up is the Yankees again. Will he be victimized by the Bombers patient approach again and see his ERA back over 5.00? Will he take advantage of a simply awful Yankees club with one foot in the grave? I have no clue. I'll try to make a guess in a day or two as to the kind of numbers Daisuke will put up in his 3rd time round the Yankees lineup. I need to see how he's feeling and how badly the Yankees continue to tumble before I make my prediction.

Italy

2007-05-16T13:32:00.000+09:00

I'll be in Italy for the next 10 days, so I may or may not be able to update MW. If you see me, it means I have internet and I can enjoy a little baseball. If not, see you soon.

The intentional walk. Do you or don't you? Discuss.

Tiger's Tale

2007-05-15T08:35:00.000+09:00

This would be quite an interesting test for Daisuke Matsuzaka as the young ace faced a tough lineup from the Central Division. Last year's AL Champs added Gary Sheffield to the mix, and have come out strong to start the 2007 campaign. Matsuzaka finally got his game back together in his last start, but the Tigers entered the game tied for 2nd in the Majors with 198 runs scored. The offense has carried the club after an astounding run of superior pitching last season. If you look at the Tigers numbers across the board, offense and pitching, they look exactly like the 2007 Yankees. Very very similar. The Yankees are under .500, while the Tigers are in 1st place in the Central with a 23-13 record. That's baseball.

Matsuzaka's day would be hard work according to the numbers, while the Red Sox could look forward to facing an underperforming Tigers staff. What would give?

After allowing a leadoff single to Curtis Granderson, Matsuzaka promptly began to mow down Tigers, retiring 8 in a row before meeting Granderson again. Daisuke has struggled with certain batters this season, while dominating others. In the Toronto contest, he couldn't seem to figure out Alex Rios who went 3 for 3 against him. Today Granderson continued that trend as he broke up the early string of outs with a home run. Matsuzaka's greatest strength on most nights this season has been his ability to mitigate damage, as he held Detroit in check otherwise. Comparing the pitching lines through 5 innings, it's noteworthy that Daisuke made one mistake to Granderson, but was fairly dominant otherwise. Nate Robertson gave up 11 hits to the Sox, but the Beantown Boys could only cash in on 3 runs. The numbers that we talked about at the start of this post held true to form with regard to Detroit's pitching. Either they're going to get it together soon, or their impressive record is going to head south a bit. As bad as the Yankees have been with the same basic results, the Tigers have played over their heads. Matsuzaka showed how good pitching against the Detroit lineup can allow a team to take advantage of the mediocre rotation.

It's interesting that Tito allowed Matsuzaka to come out for the 8th inning after finishing the 7th at 100 pitches. I was even more shocked to see the Sox allow Daisuke to go for the complete game victory. Something tells me that the Red Sox are going to increase Daisuke's pitch counts to keep him sharp. His routine in Japan was built on 10 years of conditioning, and changing him now seems dubious. He had 14 CG last season for Seibu and he can handle it. As long as the mechanics aren't falling apart late in games, injury is not really a concern. If he becomes an 9 inning pitcher for Boston from here on out...wow!

The most impressive part of Daisuke's outing was the lack of walks. His strikeout numbers weren't as dominant, but he worked relatively efficiently with A LOT of ground ball outs. The lack of baserunners via free pass helped him to work into the 9th inning and gave the Red Sox the opportunity they needed to scratch a few runs across against the Tigers. If the Red Sox hadn't scored those 4 runs in the 8th, something tells me it would have been Papelbon time. He was on his game today, and seems to have found his stride a bit more than during his rough times against the Yankees a few starts back. Daisuke allowed 2 baserunners after the 4th inning and went 1-2-3 in 4 separate innings, mainly inducing ground balls along the way. His final line was stellar at:

9 IP
124 pitches
6 hits
no walks
5 strikeouts
1 ER

He lowered his ERA to 4.17 with his second straight dominating performance and it's noteworthy that eliminating the 3 tough starts from his season totals, Matsuzaka has posted the following results in 37 innings:

2.00 ERA
9.25 K/9
4.63 K/BB

You can't take away things that have actually happened, so the Yankees games and the recent debacle against Seattle stand against his record. The results in the other 5 games look very strong though and are right in line with what he did in Japan. If he continues to put together starts like the ones on his good days, imagine what kind of results the Red Sox might enjoy by October.

Many people have asked me to write about the Japanese reaction to Hideki Okajima's performance so far. I think what he's done is beyond anyone's expectations on either side of the Pacific, but we have to note that Japanese relief pitchers have been the most successful players in the Majors Leagues throughout the migration of the last 10 years. Kaz Sasaki, Hidetoshi Hasegawa, Akinori Otsuka, Takashi Saito, and a handful of others have been unhittable at time from the bullpen and Okajima is following closely in their footsteps. "Okaji"'s numbers in Japan compare favorably with some of the most accomplished names on the Japan/MLB list of relievers, so it's not a complete surprise that he's been able to shut down opposing lineups. What is surprising is that he hasn't allowed a run since his debut, and has more strikeouts than innings pitched.

The Japanese are pleasantly surprised by his performance, and I think the best way to describe the mood is amused. Whenever people bring up the topic of Okajima's success for Boston, their is an air of pride mixed with a lot of grinning and head shaking. No one expects him to continue at this pace, as Japanese fans have memories of some of his struggles as well. People are generally enjoying the ride, wondering if and when it's going to get rocky. For my part, I think the league will catch up to Okajima at some point around the All Star break. His delivery is tough to pick up, but Major Leaguers watch a lot of video and they'll get around to hitting him. That said, he is a very good pitcher and I don't think that "catching up to him" means that he's going to fall apart or get rocked. I think he'll continue to be a rock in the Boston bullpen all year. Don't expect him to finish with a sub 2 ERA, but 2.50 is not out of the question.

Japanese Baseball Q&A

2007-05-10T13:09:00.000+09:00

Eric over at The Exrapolater sent me some questions about Japanese baseball a while back and we had an interesting back and forth. He's put the interview together for his readers, and I thought I'd link to it. It's a look at some of the important things to know about baseball in Japan, and I think readers here may enjoy it as well.

Jay Blues

2007-05-10T10:26:00.000+09:00

Wow. Are the Blue Jays struggling now. I imagine that some jobs are in real jeopardy in Toronto right now with 8 consecutive losses in the books. J.P. Ricciardi lied about an injury for months, destroying his credibility, and manager John Gibbons has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way. None of that mattered to Daisuke Matsuzaka as he looked to bounce back from some shaky performances that had a few members of the Nation in therapy.

His final line was even better than I expected, mainly because my prediction that Toronto would find a little offense after dropping 7 straight. Not on this night. If not for Alex Rios, the pitching line that Daisuke produced would be seriously frightening. Take away his 3 hits and walk and Matsuzaka would have gone 7 complete on 2 hits and 2 walks. Even so, the results were more in line with what we all expect from the talented rookie.

7 IP
5 hits
3 walks (still too many)
8 strikeouts (outstanding)
1 run (Overbay's HR)
1 win

Things are looking up for Matsuzaka as he was able to translate his recent struggles into an effective workout, and will now look to build on this win for the remainder of May. His K-rate remains one of the best in the sport at more than 10 Ks per 9 innings. If he can harness the control and avoid the walks, he will be unbeatable. Or, at least very very very very good. I'll bring you more in depth analysis of this start and the reaction from Japan shortly. Good to be back on track.

Blue Jays: Round 2

2007-05-09T13:33:00.000+09:00

What a time to meet. Daisuke has taken his lumps in his last 3 starts, and has many of his fans in Red Sox Nation either jumping off the bandwagon or quietly wondering if all the hype is deserved. The walks have been up and the pitching has been erratic from the stretch, to say the least. Matsuzaka has had some time to work on his mechanics since his last rough outing, and we will be watching his progress carefully as he faces the Toronto lineup for the second time this season. In the first meeting, Matsuzaka was cruising until he completely broke down in the 4th inning. Pitching from the stretch, Daisuke walked in the decisive run. Looking back on that outing now, it's noteworthy that Red Sox fans were disappointed in his shaky showing. He only gave up 2 runs over 6 innings, while striking out 10. What we would all give for a repeat of that performance, even considering the awful 4th inning.

Toronto is now 0 for May, having opened the month with 7 consecutive losses. Over those losses, the Jays have scored a grand total of 24 runs, which makes a per game average of 3.4 runs scored. It appears as though both Daisuke and his Boston teammates have found our neighbors to the North at precisely the right time. When a struggling and demoralized lineup meets a super talented starting pitcher with recent control problems, something's got to give right? Who will budge first, the poweful Blue Jays offense that scored over 5 runs per game in April, or the Japanese ace who sported a stellar 2.70 ERA before meeting the Yankees and Mariners?

As I've been in the business of predictions this season, I'll give it a whirl again. I believe that you will see a combination of the two outcomes. The Blue Jays will find some success against Matsuzaka, but the 26-year old rookie will show his typical mettle in escaping real damage. Here's my prediction:

7 IP
9 hits
2 walks (both to Frank Thomas)
8 strikeouts
3 runs

Matsuzaka will have a shaky inning when he gives up 2 runs, but he will escape it with a double play or some big "nobody out" strikeouts. Something along those lines. I also predict that he will finish May at 3-1 with 2 no decisions (the first being his last start against Seattle). All will be forgotten by the end of the month and Matsuzaka will start to get his fastball working to start ahead in the count more. The slider will also return to "plus plus" by sometime in mid-June, if not sooner. Buckle up folks.

The Best/Worst of...

2007-05-05T21:08:00.000+09:00

To this point in the season we've seen the best and the worst of Daisuke Matsuzaka. Opening the year against Kansas City with 10 strikeouts and a dominating performance was a setting the bar a bit high for the Japanese ace as some bumps were bound to lie ahead. Matsuzaka did plenty to impress, and enough to win, in his second start against Seattle, but came up on the short end of a Felix Hernandez one hitter. That's baseball. The third start against Toronto was equally impressive, as Daisuke struck out 10 Blue Jays and allowed only 6 baserunners over 6 innings, giving up 2 runs. The Blue Jays start exposed something unsettling in the Major League version of Matsuzaka that I'd never seen before. He seems to implode from the stretch.

I can assure you that this was not the case pitching for Seibu, and I really have no explanation for it. I noticed it in the Toronto start, and my eyes grew wider and wider as his mechanics fell apart and his delivery became rushed and incomplete. With as much scrutiny on every pitch as there is in the Major Leagues, you can bet that the Yankees studied the situation and took advantage in the two meetings just a week ago. Matsuzaka looked bad in both starts and paid the price for his mechanical breakdowns. Still, it was the Yankees and the Yankees can make even the best pitchers look bad on occasion. Just as much as the Yankees were happy to see Boston go, the Red Sox starters must have been thrilled to put the boys from the Bronx in the rear view mirror. It was no picnic for them either. Then there was Seattle: Round Two.

Opening the first inning with three walks is just plain awful and inexcusable in the Major Leagues. That's Bush League stuff that should only happen to overmatched minor leaguers and Rick Ankiel. Daisuke has lost the plate, and doesn't look right. He has been known over the years for his flawless mechanics, and they have abandoned him. I don't know why, and I'm sure no one else has a good answer for it either. It could simply be a comfort level that he hasn't achieved on the mound in the Majors yet. A lack of familiarity with the way Major League hitters think. Whatever it is, he has to fight his way through it and get back to the 1-2-3 delivery that has made him the pitcher he is.

Looking at starts 1-3, Daisuke posted a 2.70 ERA with a 10.8 K-rate and a 6.00 K/BB ratio. Those numbers look very similar to his Seibu 2004-2006 production. His starts 3-6 have seen him produce a Kei Igawa-esque 8.50 ERA with 7.5 strikeouts per 9 innings and a 1.50 K/BB. That's the bad of Matsuzaka so far.

The good of Boston is also something to look back on. The fans of Red Sox Nation, and the team itself, have been brilliant diplomats for the US and great ambassadors for New England. The reception that Matsuzaka has received is beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Yesterday, on the NHK evening news, the worst of Red Sox Nation was on display. The NHK cameras were on hand outside Fenway and in the various drinking holes around town, as they have been before and after each start, and it was not pretty. Where the cheerful drunks had been on display early in the season, and the jubilant fans carrying Japanese flags and signs had warmed the hearts of the Japanese to Boston, the idiotic underbelly of the Nation reared its ugly head after the Seattle game. Drunken frat boys with their hats turned on backwards slurred their disapproval at Matsuzaka and Theo Epstein.

"We paid $100 million dollahs fah this??!! Whatta waste."

"I saw this guy in the World Baseball Classic against Mexico and Cuba. This ain't Mexico or Cuba."

"He's wicked awful."

Okay, so I made the last one up. I don't remember all the comments exactly, but the tone and the setting was unmistakable. The tone was angry-drunk and the setting was adrenaline and frustration filled bars and exit gates at Fenway. It was venomous and immature. I've seen the same thing in New York. We have our own fraternity of drunken numbskulls too, but we haven't seen them on NHK since the Irabu days. So far, no Igawa backlash on TV, but it's sure to come. The honeymoon is over. Matsuzaka has TV announcers discussing their disappointment in his performances, and disappointment that the love affair with the fans in Boston has taken a hit.

In reality, you're only as good as your last start, so Daisuke can go out and throw a gem and all will be forgotten. The drunks on TV will be of the rosy-cheeked and goofy-grinned variety again and the Japanese announcers will beam with pride. For now, the adversity has begun. It's what makes the human interest side of sports compelling. As a friend just wrote to me in an e-mail, had Matsuzaka come in and lived up to the impossible hype from the start it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as seeing him fight through the lows as well. I agree. That's reality. No pitcher shows up on the scene and wins the Cy Young with a 0.98 ERA. There's a learning curve, and we fans of Matsuzaka are lucky that his genius will allow him to meet that curve sooner rather than later.

Yankee fans have a different bag of troubles with Kei Igawa. The two Japanese pitchers have both struggled, but where Matsuzaka has had some trouble in the stretch with his control, Igawa's trouble is pitching up in the zone with truly mediocre stuff. Matsuzaka's problems will be worked out with better mechanics. Igawa's troubles stem from the kind of pitcher he has been all along. One good day, and one awful. It's a tale of two pitchers. I expect that Matsuzaka will be in the running for the Cy Young at some point in the next 2-3 years, while Igawa will be lucky to hang onto his job.

Here's to better days ahead and less of the bozos on television.

Golden Week Amusement

2007-05-01T10:35:00.000+09:00

It's Golden Week in Japan right now, which means that people all over the country are hauling their families around on the only long vacation that many companies can afford to give to their employees. Carloads of people clog the highways and airline/hotel fares climb through the roof. It's boom season for the travel industry in Japan. Many people are taking their last chance to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom before the petals are scattered across the landscape.

For my part, I'm overdosing on baseball in between visits to family friends and long overdue errands. Pro Yakyu, Tokyo Big Six University League, Major League Baseball, you name it I'm watching. A little slice of heaven in an otherwise very busy routine. On one of my recent errand runs, I went to the local department store with my wife and baby boy. We had some clothes shopping to do for the little growing monster and I happened to stumble across a clothing display that you all might find very interesting.

You can see by the photos that (1) blond-haired Japanese mannequins are not all they're cracked up to be, and (2) the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry is alive and well all over the country. (Throw in Manchester United and you have a rather odd trio.)

I went to a second store to buy yet another round of baby goods to keep the heir to the Matsuzaka Watch throne content, dry, fed, and otherwise well adjusted and found more Yankees/Red Sox apparel for toddlers staring me in the face. This is licensed MLB material here, so you know the proceeds go into the large pool of money that the league makes from merchandising. The other teams around baseball should be thanking their lucky stars and genuflecting at the NY/BOS altar for driving the engine of international merchandising. The small market clubs get an equal share of all the revenue generated by the sale of goods and apparel, and Japan is pouring money into their coffers at this point.

One can only imagine what will happen if and when the Red Sox sign an everyday player from Japan to guarantee the regular TV coverage that will go with their Matsuzaka/Okajima games. I'm sure you'll see the Mets in on this action before long, as well as a handful of other teams. What you'll notice in these pictures is the lack of other team merchandise. There may have been a Seattle shirt or two mixed into the rack, but I didn't see it. You don't see any White Sox clothing (Iguchi) or Tampa Bay good (Iwamura). Certainly you don't see any Cardinals (Taguchi) or Rockies (Kaz Matsui) shirts in those pictures. Buying a Japanese player for your club may help the team, but it's no guarantee that it will drive your merchandising. It has to be the right player that strikes the right chord with the Japanese fans.

I'll have more for you when Matsuzaka makes his next start, but in the meantime feel free to head over to some of my other blogs to reap the benefits of my abundant baseball watching during Golden Week.

Yu Darvish Watch
Yuki Saito Watch
Koji Uehara Watch

R.I.P. Bronx Bombers

2007-04-28T12:16:00.000+09:00

To give you an idea of how worthless wins and losses are in judging a pitcher's season or ability look at these numbers:

Against the Yankees
13 IP
10 runs
13 hits
5 walks
14 K
6.92 ERA
1.385 WHIP
9.69 K/9
2.80 K/BB
2 wins against no losses

Against everyone else
20 IP
6 runs
17 hits
5 walks
24 K
2.70 ERA
1.100 WHIP
10.80 K/9
4.80 K/BB
1 win against 2 losses

If the Yankees pitchers had done anything against Daisuke, he would have lost both starts in an ugly and frustrating pair of performances. Instead, he looks like a hero. Go figure. That's baseball sometimes. His poor showings against the Yankees have raised his ERA from 2.70 to 4.36 and you know he was breathing a sigh of relief and reserving a few Rolex watches for the batters who saved his bacon. The one positive you take as a Red Sox fan from those outings was his ability to limit the damage in the worst of times. The 4th inning today was about as bad as I've ever seen Matsuzaka in all the years I've watched him. Guess what? He had the bases loaded and nobody out after walking the first three batters of the inning. He gave up four runs. The rest of the game, he was dominant. As an ace pitcher, you have to localize the damage. Every pitcher will face tough lineups that will get to them. Koufax, Pedro, Clemens, and every other pitcher with a reputation has found himself staring down ugly innings with crooked numbers on the scoreboard. Mediocre pitchers get knocked out of those games. There is no recovery. Good pitchers and great pitchers localize the damage, regroup, and keep their team in the game. Kudos to Daisuke for that effort.

As a Yankees fan, this season is perhaps the least enjoyable I've had in more than 10 years. I anticipate some kind of firing soon, perhaps Guidry. The team is not that bad. As Red Sox fans, this must be especially enjoyable, but I wonder if any of you can honestly say you have an explanation for the Yankees 8 game losing streak. I'm not talking about an analysis. It's easy to understand that scoring 4 runs and giving up 7 runs every night will produce a long losing streak, but how many people anywhere in the sport can explain what we've seen from Mariano Rivera? Puzzling. It's hard to figure that the rotation can't get a single solitary quality start over that period of time. The Yankees and Red Sox are similarly talented. The Sox have better pitching, while the Yankees have a better lineup (save Mientkiewicz). In the end, you'd expect this season to play out a bit more neck and neck. At this point, honest fans of all "(pin)stripes" have to give a hand to Theo Epstein for putting the Boston boys in a position to be the best team in the sport. That's what the Red Sox are right now. There is no better team anywhere. Period.

I think some of the things that have gone right for the Sox so far will eventually turn South. I'm not saying permanently, but rather some adversity should be expected. Manny and Ortiz will do their best to wake up and carry the club when others begin to struggle, but a bit of regression is at least in the cards. The Yankees will be better than this. The gap will narrow. The one question you have to ask yourself is will the Red Sox continue to play well enough over the next 3 weeks to a month to put the Yankees 10+ games back and eliminate them from serious AL East contention? It could happen. The Yankees could be fighting for a wild card this season, while the Sox may just have built a good enough team to have the best record in the sport and a long overdue AL East pennant. Much of that will depend on Schilling, Beckett, and Daisuke. When you can put three pitchers on the field that challenge for ERA+ numbers of 120 and above, you have a World Series contender.

Today, Matsuzaka escaped. He should be thrilled beyond belief to face other clubs for a while. The Yankees were a failure in many ways that he will need to improve upon later in the year if and when there's a pennant race and the Yankees are fielding a better rotation. Improving on these results may mean the difference between the big AL East prize and a disappointing finish to the season. I am betting on Matsuzaka despite my loyalties. Now, please excuse me while I go lock myself in a dark closet somewhere and cry myself to sleep. ;)

The Next Movement

2007-04-27T19:52:00.000+09:00

I was sitting at my desk this morning contemplating the gigantic menu of baseball that is in my future for the coming week. Japan will enjoy "Golden Week" over the first 7 days of May, a holiday that provides the Japanese an opportunity to break away from the tedious routine of long hours and very hard work. Many Japanese in the North enjoy cherry blossom viewing as the flowers reach their peak bloom. Still others will pack up their families into cars and head for the hills. I will spend some time with the family, sitting under the "sakura" and sharing the festive spirit of the season with my neighbors. The rest of the time will be wall to wall baseball. The first game on the slate is Matsuzaka vs. the Yankees II: The Bombers Revenge.

As visions of gyroballs danced in my head, a fellow teacher peaked his head over the stack of books between us and asked me if I would be up at 8am to watch tomorrow. I laughed. "Of course", I said. He then told me that he would be up to watch as well and would begin to drink beer much earlier than usual for the occasion. Many Japanese (especially in the North) love to drink beer with every fleeting free moment they have away from work. 8am is a bit extreme, but it started to make sense to me as I thought about what would possess him to start his brew sampling at the crack of dawn. Matsuzaka's starts have almost exclusively come during the work week here, and therefore have gone largely unseen by live Japanese audiences. Not only would many Japanese be seeing Matsuzaka in the Majors for the 1st or 2nd time, all of us will be seeing Daisuke against Hideki Matsui for the first time.

I don't get the sense that the Matsuzaka vs. Matsui meeting carries the same buzz as the Ichiro event, but it is still a major happening nonetheless. Matsui is a favorite of many Giants fanatics, and especially many of the older generation; the 30-somethings and above. Ichiro has the idol appeal that draws in a younger audience, as well as being the 1st position player to head to the US. He won the MVP. Matsui is soft spoken, kind of a goofy interview, and could care less about anything but playing baseball well. He's a very good representative for the sport, no matter the country, but he is not as "sexy" as his Seattle counterpart. Matsui also faced Daisuke in far fewer real game situations. Most of their meetings came in spring games and All Star matchups. There was no interleague until recently. The one caveat to that is the meetings that Daisuke dominated in the Japan Series in 2002 in a losing effort. Matsui's Giants would sweep the Lions for the last of their 20 franchise championships. Here's a look at the total matchups:

As you can see, Matsui has been owned by Matsuzaka. 2 for 17 with one home run and two walks. As Matsuzaka got a bit more experienced he began to strike Matsui out a lot more as well. It's been 4 and a half years since they last met, so it's really anyone's guess as to how their matchup will play out, but it will certainly be a lot of fun; drunken fun for some.

The team matchup is a serious affair, as the Sox will be looking to blacken the Yankees other eye and bury them in the standings. A humiliating defeat of the Yankees may be enough to get Joe Torre fired, fair or not, but we'll be watching on the Yankees side to see how much say George Steinbrenner has in this organization. If the Sox sweep again, and Torre stays, you know George is a figurehead. I think we'll see a much more competitive series at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees backs are against the wall, and they will be starting Pettitte and Wang, along with Jeff Karstens. No more Chase Wright to kick around. I also think that the Sox have played slightly over their heads, while the Yankees have played far below their real ability. I'm going to give the Yankees a 2-1 series win, but only by the skin of their teeth. They do get to bat last this time around.

As for Daisuke, he wasn't that great against New York the first time around, but he got the win. The Yankees are dealing with some serious issues right now, and were just blanked by A.J. Burnett. The signs point to a Matsuzaka gem here. Something along the lines of 8 innings, 3 hits, 1 walk, and 1 ER against 13 strikeouts. I'm just not ready to give up on the Yankees at home that way. I'll be a bit of a homer here and predict Matsuzaka will get knocked out early. You'll hate me for this and I'll probably find that my initial prediction of 8 lights out innings was correct, but I'll stick my neck out and guess:

5+ IP
8 hits
2 walks
5 strikeouts
6 ER

The Yankees will take Game One fairly comfortably behind Pettitte. Geez....I know I'm going to be sorry for this prediction. Go easy on me people. I'm sensitive. ;)

Yankee Doodle Dandy

2007-04-26T08:41:00.000+09:00

Well it wasn't such a dandy for Daisuke, but he got the win. I suppose it made up for the King Felix and Gustavo Chacin matchups that went against the Red Sox rookie. To be honest, I wasn't able to see the game as I was away on some important business for a few days. I have it on my HDD recorder (my new best friend this season) and I want to take a look at it more closely before the next matchup. I think a comprehensive preview of the next Yankees game featuring our hero will serve the dual purpose of examining what happened in the last game, as a way to predict what will occur in the coming contest. You all watched the game, so you know better than I what happened blow by blow. You don't need me to write anything up about the storyline, having been firsthand witnesses to the sweep yourselves.

I predicted in an e-mail to a good friend that Matsuzaka's pitching line vs. the Yankees would look something like this (actual numbers in parentheses):

6 IP (7 IP)
8 hits (8 hits)
2 walks (1 walk, 2 HBP)
8 K (7 K)
4 ER (6 ER)

Not bad. If I keep this up, I just might be able to make some money in Vegas. Last thing today, being swept was not a very pleasant experience for me. The Sox look good. I tip my cap to Theo Epstein for his offseason moves, the best of which just might be Okajima in the end (save Matsuzaka). Okaji has been a lifesaver for a pen that looks mighty bad outside Papelbon. The Yankees are a better team than they showed in that series, thanks to some hideous pitching from rookies and one HOF closer. Another great season ahead in the "Greatest Rivalry in Sports" (c).

Dealing with Daisuke

2007-04-21T17:28:00.000+09:00

Finally, we have liftoff on the recap of the Toronto outing here at Matsuzaka Watch. Before I get into some batter analysis, I thought I'd give my general sense of this performance from an overall perspective. This was Daisuke Matsuzaka as I saw him in Japan. This was about the best I've seen him pitch against Major League hitting to date, and the control that he showed with his entire arsenal was remarkable. I also liked the way he worked pitch combinations more in this game.

Matsuzaka worked primarily off a variety of fastballs and popped the radar gun at 94-95 on many occasions with the 4-seam version. The cutter has improved a lot since he arrived in the US, and I don't remember seeing him go to that pitch nearly as much for Seibu. It's almost as though he's feeling more comfortable with his control of the cutter than he is with the slider. That makes him all the more dangerous when he gets the killer slider back to full strength. It was very good, if not great, against the Jays at any rate.

The 4th inning was Matsuzaka's killer. I felt there were a few factors related to the poor showing in the 4th that need to be addressed. First, his fifth pitch to Vernon Wells was a vicious slider that bit Wells' in half at the knees, but Ed Montague called it a ball from behind the plate. That was a missed call and it frustrated and annoyed Daisuke. I've seen him get burned by bad calls in the past, but he doesn't usually flinch. He usually gets the next pitch in the same location and sits the batter down. Not against Toronto. The very next pitch was tapped to 3B, and Lowell made a nice barehanded throw to first, only to miss Wells by a step. Matsuzaka lost it.

He threw a 4 pitch walk to Frank Thomas, and nothing was close. He threw two nice pitches to Overbay, but a little flick of the bat on the second one produced an astroturf single past Lugo at short. Another bad break on a pitch by which Overbay was badly fooled. Matsuzaka started to work way too fast and lost that nice coiling-uncoiling motion that he has. He looked rushed and uncomfortable throwing a lot of fastballs to Hill. Hill stepped out very very late and Montague allowed him time out on the seventh pitch of that at bat. The final pitch was a badly bounced fastball for a walk. Finally, Greg Zaun drew a walk to force in a run on a lot of balls which missed by a mile. It was not vintage Matsuzaka, but I think the combination of Montague's missed call on Wells, the two weak hits, and Montague's time out for Hill threw him off. No excuses.

What you have to like, however, was the regrouping that he did to keep the game close. Matsuzaka struck out 5 of the last 8 batters he faced, including 4 in a row. Those at bats were dominated by the 2-seam, 4-seam, and cutter along with the slider and an occasional change. The variety of fastballs that he used was something I had hoped to see at some point. Playing around with the offspeed stuff is nice when you can fool batters, but Matsuzaka is too good to be primarily an offspeed guy. He is like Pedro or David Cone in that he can blast a fastball by you for strikes one and two, and he can place it on the black anytime he wants. That sets up the 20 other pitches that might come flying out of his hand and you have no hope. I like the fastball as the primary pitch, especially when it comes in 3 different flavors.

Now for a couple of batters. I decided to write up three of the Jays batters, rather than the complete roster. I have notes on the whole game, but at this point we see that Matsuzaka is going to dominate the league average and below guys by showing fastball and working the change and slider in locations that are just not fair. The big slugger types get a steady diet of high heat until the hammer is dropped with a final curve or slider for effect. I may go back to doing an entire lineup of hitters as we continue, particularly with the Yankees coming up the next two games, but I stuck with the three Jays hitters with career OPS of .800+. Those hitters are Vernon Wells (.827), Frank Thomas (.988), and Lyle Overbay (.835), hitting 3-4-5 in the Toronto lineup. None of them has been particularly hot to start the season, but there are who they are for a reason. Matsuzaka will show us the most in the way he deals with these hitters.

Vernon Wells (1-3 - 17 pitches: 10 fastballs, 7 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (center-foul), fastball (93mph-outside black-foul), cutter (outside-G4-3)
#2 - fastball (94mph-high-swinging strike), slider (high, swinging strike), fastball (center-foul), fastball (94mph-high and inside-ball), freaky slider (inside-strike 3...oh, wait....ball), slider (outside-infield single to 3B)
#3 - change (center-foul), curve (low-ball), cutter (inside-strike), fastball (high-foul), slider (high-foul), slider (low-ball), fastball (94mph-center-foul), fastball (94mph-rising-swinging K)

Wells was actually out all three times at the plate, including two strikeouts. The little cheap hit he managed after Ed Montague's blown call innocently opened the door for the poor 4th inning that ended up losing the game for the Sox. He went right after the Jays best hitter with a whole lot of heat. The threat of the slider was enough to have Wells defensive all night. Guarding against that pitch is what made Matsuzaka a monster in the Pacific League, and Wells fell victim to that style of pitching in this game.

Frank Thomas (0-2, 2 strikeouts, 1 BB - 11 pitches: 6 fastballs, 4 offspeed, 1 ?)

#1 - fastball (center-strike), curve (outside-strike), fastball (outside-swinging K)
#2 - pitch not televised (ball), fastball (high-ball), slider (outside-ball), fastball (high-ball 4)
#3 - curve (low-strike), fastball (high-foul), fastball (center-foul), change (outside-swinging K)

Thomas almost saw the minimum number of possible pitches for each of his 3 at bats. A three pitch strikeout, a four pitch walk, and a 4 pitch strikeout. Matsuzaka got the benefit of facing Thomas when he was clearly pressing. He has opened the 2007 season very cold, and is not living up to the comeback year he had in 2006. He seemed to be fooled very badly in both at bats when he struck out, and the walk was really a no contest. It came after the unfortunate Vernon Wells at bat in the 4th inning, and contributed to the Jays win in the end.

Lyle Overbay (1-3, RBI, strikeout - 11 pitches: 8 fastballs, 3 offspeed)

#1 - curve (center-strike), slider (inside, but close-ball), cutter (inside-foul), fastball (low/outside black - called strike three)
#2 - cutter (inside-strike), change (outside-excuse me RBI single past Lugo)
#3 - fastball (center-strike), cutter (inside-ball), fastball (low-ball), fastball (center-strike), 2-seam fastball (center-G4-3)

Against the left handed Overbay, Matsuzaka went with the cutter three different times. I'm guessing that the cutter is something he wants to add to his already impressive collection of pitches for just such occasions. Powerful Major Leaguers batting from the left will get the slider, but more than likely the cutter will take it's place until the Matsuzaka special has his full confidence.

This sets up the final part of this recap. The Toronto game was an unfortunate loss to a decent team that got a little lucky, and had Red Sox killer Gustavo Chacin on the hill, opposing Daisuke. The Yankees will prove to be the greatest test of Matsuzaka's pitching career, stacked from top to bottom, and probably the most common opponent he will face over the next 6 years. This is why he was brought to Boston, right? Here's my prediction on the Yankee batters.

Johnny Damon will get a hit of some kind, but he will be held to one good at bat. Derek Jeter will have a multi-hit game, as I think guys with compact swings, who wait on the ball well, do better against Matsuzaka. Abreu will be on base at some point, but a lot will be determined by how effective Daisuke is at throwing his pitches for strikes. If he isn't sharp, Abreu may beat him. A-Rod is hard to figure. Normally, I wouldn't give him much chance in this matchup. As good as he is, I think Matsuzaka can strike him out repeatedly with hard movement. This year A-Rod is inhuman, and his swing is much more compact. I can't accurately predict what you'll see, but it will be fun. Giambi is meat. I don't think he can hit Matsuzaka. He could draw a walk, but the 2007 version of the Giambino doesn't hit much. When he does, it goes a looooong way, but his average is evidence that he is not going to "hit" Daisuke. If Posada plays, he's also meat. Matsuzaka shouldn't throw him a single straight pitch. Posada will beat him if he throws a fastball close to the plate, but anything dropping down in the zone will provide more strikeout fodder for the Boston ace. Cano will also have a good night. He may look silly once or twice, but his swing is also compact enough and he waits well on pitches. I'm assuming that Doug Mientkiewicz will play first and hit ninth, so you can chalk up 3 or 4 strikeouts there. As a Yankee fan, I've given up on Minky doing anything but senselessly sac bunting for Torre this year.

Strap in people. This should be fun. (I will be rooting for the Yankees to score double digit runs against Matsuzaka, by the way. I know that's not a popular sentiment here, but I have warned you that I'm a Yankee fan all along. I'm guessing that the Sox will win the game 7-4.)

Toronto Pitching

2007-04-18T21:39:00.000+09:00

The Seattle recap is up below. Sorry for the delay in getting to that. Work and taking care of baby has kept my hands full lately and I was only able to get to the writing portion of my analysis tonight. The notes were there, but the time wasn't.

I will have a full piece on the hard luck Toronto start up tomorrow at some point. I've just watched it and put together my notes, but there isn't much time this evening to complete the job. Fear not. This one will be up for you faster than you can say, "Where's the offense fellas?"

Felix the Cat

2007-04-18T17:52:00.000+09:00

The anticipated matchup between Ichiro and Matsuzaka was usurped by the King of Seattle. That would be Felix Hernandez, the 2nd year ace of the Mariners. His one hitter of the Red Sox stole all the thunder from the Japanese duo's matchup. In fact, Kenji Johjima's continued success against Matsuzaka also played a part in stealing some of the attention on this evening. The aftermath of the big event has since passed, and we're on to the next start. Matsuzaka vs. Toronto. For your enjoyment, a record of the matchups of the Seattle game:

Ichiro Suzuki (0-4 – 17 pitches: 8 fastballs, 9 offspeed)

#1 – curve (middle-strike), cutter (inside-foul), curve (low/inside-ball), fastball (inside-ball), cutter (inside-ball), fastball (G1-3)

#2 – change (low/inside-ball), fastball (high-F8)

#3 – change (low-ball), tight slider (middle/down-strike), fastball (low/outside-ball), tight slider (middle/down-strike), splitter? (in the dirt-swinging K)

#4 - fastball (brushback-ball), fastball (outside-foul), change (low-ball), fastball (FC4-6)

Was Ichiro amped up for this game too soon? It seems that he may have gotten himself into one helluva slump by thinking about the showdown too soon. Josh Beckett fanned the man 3 times in the game one night earlier, and Ichiro looked out of sorts against Matsuzaka. He wasn't flicking at the ball or putting the barrel of the bat on anything. Even the great ones can overthink.

Adrian Beltre (1-3, 1 walk – 11 pitches: 5 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - curve (middle-strike), fastball (G6-3)

#2 – fastball (outside-foul), slider (low/outside-ball), fastball (inside-ball), good curve (P6)

#3 – hanging change (RBI double off the wall)

#4 - curve (low/outside-ball), fastball (low-ball), curve (low/outside-ball), fastball (high/inside-walk)

Beltre may have reaped the benefit of some post-Ichiro adrenaline in his final two matchups with Matsuzaka. Daisuke couldn't seem to find the zone and lost the batter to some very mediocre pitches.

Jose Vidro (2-4, 1 RBI, 1 strikeout – 11 pitches: 5 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - fastball 96mph (outside-ball), curve (low-ball), slider (middle-foul), fastball (middle-single to left)

#2 - slider (strike), cutter (foul), fastball (outside-ball), biting slider (inside-check swing, called strike 3)

#3 - mediocre fastball (high-RBI line drive to center)

#4 - change (outside-strike), fastball (GIDP3-6-1)

Obviously, the discussions in the Seattle dugout were to swing early in the count in the third and fourth times through the order. You'll see the same pattern in the following batters, with some success in the third go around.

Raul Ibanez (0-3, 1 strikeout – 12 pitches: 5 fastballs, 7 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (inside-ball), slider (low/inside-ball), curve (inside-foul), curve (outside-foul), slider (G5-4)

#2 - slider (swinging strike), change (low-strike), slider (bounced-ball), fastball (low-ball), fastball (bounced), fastball (inside black-called strike 3)

#3 - fastball (centered-smoked line drive F8)

Ibanez looked overmatched all night. His line drive in the final turn at bat was well hit, but he was fooled on virtually every other Matsuzaka offering. Raul is a very dangerous hitter against a lot of Major League pitchers, but Matsuzaka is just the type to give him trouble...a guy that throws a variety of pitches at varying speeds. Of course, that's a recipe for trouble for most hitters, but Ibanez particularly likes to feed off the fastball.

Richie Sexson (1-3, 1 strikeout – 10 pitches: 6 fastballs, 4 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (inside-strike), fastball (G6-3)
#2 - curve (inside-foul), change (swinging strike), fastball (outside black-ball???), fastball (center-foul), wicked curve (inside-swinging K)
#3 - fastball (high-swinging strike), fastball (outside-strike), curve (check swing bloop to 1st)

Daisuke knows how to pitch to the giant lumberjack types. A steady diet of heat, followed by the nasty breaking pitch for the strikeout. The curve Matsuzaka used as his out pitch in the 3rd at bat worked, but Sexson got lucky and stuck his bat out for a cheap hit.

Jose Guillen (1-2, HBP – 11 pitches: 8 fastballs, 3 offspeed)

#1 - slider (outside-ball), fastball (low/outside-ball), curve (high/inside-ball), mediocre fastball (middle-lined high off the Green Monster for a single)

#2 - fastball (high-ball), fastball (HBP)

#3 - slider (low-check swing strike), fastball (foul), fastball (high-ball), fastball (low-ball), fastball (outside-F9)

The scouting report on Guillen must be a heavy diet of fastballs. More than any of the other Mariners, Matsuzaka featured his heater to the hot-headed Guillen. I'll be interested to see how this plays out in the next Boston vs. Seattle matchup. Keep a close eye with me. I'm betting Daisuke uses the curve first pitch in the next game.

Kenji Johjima (2-3, 2 doubles – 9 pitches: 6 fastballs, 3 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (low-strike), hanging change (double to left)

#2 - curve (inside-ball), hanging curve (mashed foul), fastball 95mph (G5-4)

#3 - fastball (inside-ball), fastball (low/inside-foul), fastball (inside-ball), fastball (middle-double to left)

Johjima owns Daisuke. The mastery of Matsuzaka goes back to their days in the Pacific when Johjima was with the Hawks and Daisuke with the Lions. The catcher sported a lifetime batting average of .271 against Matsuzaka, 32-118 with 5 home runs. Where Ichiro has failed over the years, Johjima has defied the odds and beat up on "The World's Ace". Both of his doubles were solid knocks that left no doubt about who is Matsuzaka's daddy on the M's.

Yunieksi Betancourt (0-2, sac fly – 10 pitches: 4 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - slider (low-ball), slider (low-ball), hanging curve/slider? (SF to left)

#2 - fastball (foul), fastball (foul), change (low-L6)

#3 -fastball (high-ball), fastball (high-swinging strike), slider (inside-ball), change (F8)

Betancourt really never had a good look at Matsuzaka. The sac fly in the 1st go around was a bit of a gimme, but it pays to be in the right place at the right time. Matsuzaka worked off the fastball and finished with the hard breaking stuff, the reverse approach to the guys in the upper half of the batting order.

Jose Lopez (2-3 – 12 pitches: 6 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (middle-strike), fastball (high-foul), slider (inside-foul), fastball (G5-3)

#2 - biting slider (low/outside-swinging strike), slider (low/outside-swinging strike), fastball (outside black-ball), fastball (outside-opposite field single to right)

#3 - change (foul), fastball (outside black-strike), slider (outside bouncer-ball), hanging curve? (single to left)

Matsuzaka was sloppy with Lopez. This is the type of batter that he should make look foolish, but he couldn't finish the job after being up 0-2 in both of the final at bats. That's the kind of situation that puts a pitcher in trouble, losing the #9 guy after a dominating start.

Update

2007-04-17T14:02:00.000+09:00

Excuse the tardiness on my latest recap. I've been very busy with a number of pressing things. Look for a double whammy of Matsuzaka fun coming your way with the detailed analysis of Matsui vs. Ichiro I and the upcoming start vs. Toronto.

Apologies to my loyal readers.....

Closeup Gendai

2007-04-13T13:10:00.000+09:00

This has been a very busy week, and as such I haven't had enough time to completely recap the performance of our subject, Daisuke Matsuzaka, against the Seattle Mariners. I promise it will be up within the next day or two. In the meantime, I thought I'd briefly share a thought or two on the game, and tell you about a very interesting program I watched last night.

7 innings, 8 hits, 1 walk, 4 strikeouts, 3 earned runs

That's called a "Quality Start" in baseball circles, and that's what the Red Sox got from Matsuzaka on a night when his best stuff didn't arrive in time for the game. It's interesting how high everyone on both sides of the Pacific has set the bar for Daisuke that people are generally lukewarm on his Fenway debut. It wasn't so long ago that people were regularly heard wondering aloud if he'd be a huge disappointment, and now we're conditioned to say, "Meh." when he doesn't throw a shutout. No, he wasn't sharp. It is worth noting, however, that the Red Sox offense is expected to score 5+ runs a game this season, and a performance like the one we witnessed really is good enough to win more than 60% of the time under Pythagorean Win Expectations.

The issue so far this season has been the inconsistency of the Matsuzaka slider. That pitch is one of the most fearsome and unhittable pitches ever seen, but has been absent on too many occasions since the start of Spring Training. I've seen one or two of his world class sliders in the games he's pitched. That brings me to the program I saw last night. It's an NHK regular feature called "Closeup Gendai" which means "Closeup Today", with "Today" indicating modern times, rather than the day in question. The host of this excellent program is one of my favorite journalists in any language, Hiroko Kuniya. Kuniya is a graduate of Brown University with majors in international relations and international economics. She speaks both English and Japanese and has worked on both sides of the Pacific. She is brilliant, actually.

On this evening, her guests in studio were Tsuyoshi Yoda (yes, Yoda), a former Japanese Rookie of the Year for Lotte, and current NHK pitching analyst, and Robert Whiting, author of "You Gotta Have Wa" and "The Meaning of Ichiro" among other excellent publications. The topic was Daisuke Matsuzaka and his debut for the Red Sox. The trio discussed a number of things, ranging from the significance of a move of this kind by a Japanese ace to the United States, his prospects for success, his 10 strikeout debut, and his recent matchup with Ichiro. The most compelling portion of the discussion was the analysis of Matsuzaka's slider. An astrophysicist chimed in via taped presentation on the differences between the NPB and MLB baseballs, and the more slippery leather of the US version. He showed how it is effecting the rotation of Daisuke's slider, and Yoda (in his ever so wise way) demonstrated the adjustment that Matsuzaka would have to make with his thumb to get the bite back on his famed out pitch.

Whiting made a very good account of himself in Japanese, as one would expect, and helped to paint a picture of the Major League expectations and the frenzy on US soil over the Japanese hero. Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus also made a cameo by tape, and the 12-9 PECOTA-projected record was featured as a starting point for expectations that may have to be moved upward as we see more of Daisuke.

It was a great roundtable, and I learned a lot. I'll give you the recap soon. Stay tuned.

We Meet At Last

2007-04-12T08:29:00.000+09:00

"When I left you I was but the learner...now I am the master." - Darth Vader

I won't be able to live blog this game today, as I'm currently sitting at my desk at work. I did want to drop in to share a quick story about my Ichiro vs. Matsuzaka experience. I have to leave home at 8:05 at the latest to arrive at work in time for our morning teacher's meeting. It's very bad form in Japan to be late to that meeting, so I had no choice. As I was walking out of my house, Ichiro was strapping on his elbow armor and the announcers were working themselves into a fever pitch. It was excruciating. Each step towards the door I took, Ichiro took a step closer to the batter's box. There was nothing I could do.

Then, I remembered that recently my cell phone crapped out after 2 and a half years and I was forced to replace it. The service here is great and I was able to upgrade to a new phone for about $30. My old phone was a standard issue model with a simple camera and no further bells or whistles. The new phone has a camera, mp3 player, and a television. Go figure. I thought I'd be out of luck to see the pitch, as (1) NHK is not one of the 5 channels that the phone can pick up on the local airwaves, and (2) watching TV while driving is enough to get a person killed.

I turned on the TV, sitting in my driveway, and I was in luck on point #1. The local channels had cut away to the game to show Ichiro vs. Matsuzaka I, and I could at least get a peek at that at bat. The problem was #2. I had to go. I had to start on my way to work, and I wasn't about to put myself in danger for one at bat, no matter how historic. I would at least settle for listening in. Kind of like radio baseball, which was always good enough for me in the past. As luck would have it, first pitch came while I was at a red light sent from heaven. I watched the entire at bat from curve ball one to ground out 1-3. Sometimes God is smiling down on us.

I'll be back later with a substantial recap, and maybe an update or two, if I can manage it.

Clash of the Titans

2007-04-10T16:05:00.000+09:00

There is no baseball figure more revered in Japan than Shigeo Nagashima. The former Tokyo Giants third baseman was a teammate of Sadaharu Oh during the 60s and 70s and helped to lead the famous club to 9 consecutive Japan Series titles. Nagashima hit a home run in the first game attended by the Emperor, and will always remain as an icon of Japanese fighting spirit, long after he's gone. Nagashima was a very popular manager of the Giants and was scheduled to lead the 2004 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team before falling ill before the trip to Sydney. A young Daisuke Matsuzaka would hit 100 on the radar gun and absolutely dominate the Australians in a 1-0 losing effort that stunned Japan and the international baseball community.

Nagashima's stroke and his limited involvement in the day to day operations of the Giants, and baseball in general, reminds us that all legends eventually fade, at least in the physical world. Hideki Matsui would have been the natural successor to Nagashima as the cleanup batter of the famous Yomiuri club, and a 55 home run slugger. Had he continued to play for Kyojin, Matsui may well be thought of as that eternal hero and the embodiment of the Japanese fighting spirit that Nagashima, his former manager, sought to pass along to him. One thing has sidetracked that lineage. Ichiro Suzuki.

No one could have ever anticipated that a Japanese player would cross the Pacific to play in the Major Leagues when Oh and Nagashima were dominating the sport, all those years ago. Even in the modern era, it would have seemed far fetched to imagine that the first player to boldly test those Major League waters would immediately win an MVP award. Ichiro so captured the imagination of the Japanese, that he wears the pride of a nation like his Mariners uniform every time he takes the field. He is 2000's embodiment of Japanese fighting spirit. Bold, excellent, and international. I highly recommend you read The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave from Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime by Robert Whiting. His books just keep getting better each time out.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is the same kind of person for the Japanese. He transcends mortal man in a way, because he has forged his own legend on the biggest stages in baseball. Koshien, Rookie of the Year, the Sawamura Award, the Japan Series, and finally the World Baseball Classic. All that remains is a Cy Young and a World Series championship. Matsuzaka has the potential to mean as much to Japan as Ichiro. Ichiro was the pioneer and the trailblazer, but Matsuzaka is the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Yamato. He walks the path that Ichiro cleared, but he does it as an anointed national treasure. A kind of royalty.

The upcoming series between the Red Sox and the Mariners carries with it a significance that perhaps will not be understood until both heroes have retired. I was at the first meeting between Ichiro and Matsui, and it was electric at Yankee Stadium. This meeting, in contrast, is a direct confrontation, where the Yankees and Mariners series was merely a sideshow act. When Matsuzaka takes the mound in the top of the first and stares down Ichiro it will be watched by more people that you can possibly imagine. It will be scrutinized more than any at bat has ever been scrutinized in the history of the sport, perhaps. Japanese television will run the highlights, not for days, but forever. This will be the Japanese people's living and breathing irresistible force meeting the flesh and blood immovable object.

The two players have faced one another before. When Ichiro was a bonafide superstar for the Orix Blue Wave, Matsuzaka was a wet behind the ears rookie straight off the dirt of Koshien. They met for the first time on May 16, 1999 at the Seibu Dome. In what has to be one of the most remarkable and memorable performances of his career, an 18-year old Matsuzaka struck out the legendary Ichiro Suzuki the first three times they faced one another. The fourth and final at bat that day saw Ichiro draw a walk. If you watch video of that faithful day with a 2007 mindset, you'll marvel at the youth and power of Daisuke Matsuzaka, noticeably smaller than the present day version. Ichiro looks the same, but also appears a bit smaller and younger. It must be the hamburgers in America, right? Fortunately for all of us, this moment has been preserved for our enjoyment at YouTube, and I proudly offer it to you here for your viewing pleasure:

The following chart is a complete account of the at bats between these two players. Ichiro managed an 8-34 (.235) lifetime record against Matsuzaka with 1 home run. The three consecutive strikeouts account for 3 of the 4 that Daisuke managed against the hard-to-fan outfielder, which adds some mystique to the performance.

It has been said, although I have no hard evidence of it, that Matsuzaka had no interest in playing for the Mariners when he asked to be posted. He didn't want to share the spotlight with Ichiro, instead making his mark on his own without distraction. Proving his ability on the highest stage would be an individual accomplishment that should stand on its own. He did say in February, however, when posed with a question about Ichiro joining him in Boston, “I played with Ichiro-san on the same team at WBC (World Baseball Classic) last year for the first time. I was so impressed by him. I felt that I could trust him. If I could play with him on the same team, I could never feel more confident than that. But this is his decision to make after all.”

Whatever the relationship between these two icons has been, it is about to change again. The evolution of Japan's participation in Major League Baseball gets more interesting all the time. We'll all be there to watch it together, and for a moment in time both the US and Japan will be holding their collective breaths.

Darvish Watch 2007

2007-04-08T17:13:00.000+09:00

Since we're between starts, I thought I'd take a second to plug one of my other projects, Darvish Watch. Some of you may have visited the Darvish Watch blog already, but in case you haven't it's a project exactly the same as Matsuzaka Watch dedicated to the 20-year old ace of the Nippon Ham Fighters, and perhaps the heir apparent to Daisuke as Japan's ace.

He's got a ways to go before he can be discussed in the same breath as Daisuke, but he did lead the Fighters to their first championship last season and subsequently led the same club to the championship at the Asia Games. His manager, Trey Hillman, recently said that he believes Darvish will be a better pitcher than Fenway's new monster. That may or may not be true, but he will be one of the best pitchers in the world sometime down the road. It's not clear whether he'll ever play in the Major Leagues. Part of me believes he won't, as he's quite comfortable in Japan, but he's already on his way to accomplishing everything possible in the NPB while still in his early 20's. All that remains really is a Sawamura Award. If he manages to secure that honor over the next year or two, you may hear rumblings about a posting. Just stay tuned.

More to come here in the next day or two. Come back to read the preview of the Matsuzaka vs. Ichiro matchup scheduled for later in the week.

Matsuzaka Watch 2007: Episode 1

2007-04-06T10:15:00.000+09:00

A year ago I started to blog about Daisuke Matsuzaka at my Yankees blog Canyon of Heroes. At that time, Matsuzaka Watch was merely a feature that I intended to run after each of his starts, but things gained momentum and I decided that MW merited its own space on the internet. I had to bring people information about this pitcher on a more full time basis. Just following the World Baseball Classic performance that earned him the MVP, I began to write. His first 2006 start was against the SoftBank Hawks. You can read that game recap here at Matsuzaka Watch.

Following the 10-day layoff after the WBC, which included a flight halfway around the world, Matsuzaka wasn’t all that sharp. In that game, he managed to go 8 innings on 126 pitches, giving up 3 runs, while striking out 6. The Watch had begun. A new watch begins here today, as Daisuke took the mound for the first time as a Major League player. The buzz has built to an electric level all over the baseball world, and many of his supporters on both sides of the Pacific held their breath as he pitched, inning by inning. How would this new chapter begin? Would it show the promise and the level of excellence that I’ve been trumpeting here for a year, or would the naysayers have their first feather in the “naysaying” cap? Pedro or Irabu?

By now, I’m sure you know that Matsuzaka went 7 strong innings, giving up 6 hits, one walk, and an earned run (on a home run), while striking out 10 batters on 108 pitches. The Red Sox earned him his first Big League win with 4 runs of support, although 2 would have sufficed. I sped around the internet in the wake of the victory to gauge the reaction of various fans. Red Sox fans were understandably jubilant, while many less-reality based Yankee fans wanted to poke holes in the performance, chalking it up to a AAA quality Royals team. Other, more objective fans were impressed and look forward to more from the Japanese ace. People here in the Far East have been proud and happy all morning, with wall-to-wall news coverage of the outing. I appear to be the only one at work visibly tired from my 3am wake up call, but I’m betting that there are others who are just better at hiding it than me.

As I will do with each Matsuzaka start this season, a batter-by-batter look at the pitcher’s approach will be found just below. You may be able to see the way that Matsuzaka works by following this analysis, and I hope to perform this portion of the recaps in a few different ways. Today, I have chose to go batter-by-batter, rather than inning-by-inning. I’d like to establish the way that Daisuke changes his approach (or doesn’t) to hitters in his 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th time through the order. In future recaps, you might find standard inning by inning account of the pitching from leadoff to the final out of each frame. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve as well to keep things interesting. Here we go:

David DeJesus (2-3, 1 HR, 1 run, 1 RBI – 11 pitches: 6 fastballs, 5 offspeed)

#1 – fastball (foul), change (high-ball), hanging curve (1B to center)

#2 – slider (inside-ball), curve (inside-ball), fastball (low-strike), fastball (inside-ball), fastball (foul), fastball (high-F8)

#3 – change (middle-strike), fastball (90 mph-HR to right)

Matsuzaka had the most trouble with DeJesus, who seemed to be waiting on the fastball. Daisuke missed with his location on the breaking pitches and DeJesus did what a good leadoff hitter should do, he waited for his pitch. The two hits that DeJesus worked against Matsuzaka were on a hanging curve and a flat fastball. Patience pays off when you get a couple of mistakes to hit. He did.

Esteban German (1-3, 1 strikeout – 13 pitches: 4 fastballs, 9 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (outside-strike), change (high-ball), slider (low/outside in the dirt-ball), fastball (low-G4 force out 4-3)

#2 – change (high-ball), slider (low/outside-swinging strike), fastball (on the hands-foul), slider (bouned-ball), fastball (low- called strike 3)

#3 – curve (strike), change (middle/in-strike), slower change (high-ball), change (low-out in front but popped up for a bloop hit)

Matsuzaka clearly wanted the ball down against German, and he managed to do so for the most part. The first 2 at bats saw Daisuke record outs on low fastballs, while he tried the change as an out pitch in the final at bat. He had German badly fooled, but was unlucky as the ball popped high into the air and dropped between Pedroia and Drew.

Mark Teahan (0-2, 1 walk, 2 strikeouts – 18 pitches: 5 fastballs, 13 offspeed)

#1 - change (low-ball), change (inside-strike), fastball (high-ball), change (outside/low-ball), good change (strike), fastball (outside-ball 4)

#2 - slider (high-ball), slider (strike), slider (high-foul), fastball (high-foul), splitter (down/in-ball), change (low-called strike 3)

#3 - fastball (outside-strike), change (outside-ball), slower change (outside-ball), change (outside-strike), fastball (outside-ball), curve (looking strikeout)

A lack of feel in the first inning forced Matsuzaka into a bad situation. He ended up walking Teahan on 6 pitches, and never really gave himself a chance. In his interviews with Japanese television after the game he remarked that the cold weather gave him some early control problems that worked themselves out as his warmed up later. That was evident as Teahan was sent to the bench looking in his final two at bats. A no contact day for the Royals number three hitter.

Emil Brown (1-3, 2B, 1 strikeout – 6 pitches: 3 fastballs, 3 offspeed)

#1 - curve (high-foul), slider (back to the pitcher-1-6-3 double play)

#2 - fastball (outside-strike), fastball (down-strike), fastball (high cheese-strike three)

#3 - hanging curve (2B to left field)

Brown's approach was clearly to look for his pitch early and hit it hard. He failed miserably in his first two at bats, letting Daisuke off the hook in the 1st inning, and only saw something he could handle on a mistake pitch in the 6th inning. The curve was only marginally effective all day, while the fastball and slider (Daisuke's bread and butter) worked to perfection.

Alex Gordon (1-3, 1 strikeout – 12 pitches: 6 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (high-foul), hanging change (F7)
#2 - curve (good low location-strike), slider (inside-swinging strike), fastball (up-ball), fastball (low-ball), fastball (94 mph-broken bat single through short)
#3 - splitter (low-check swing strike), splitter (low-strike), fastball (high-ball), splitter (low-foul), fastball (93 mph-strike three)

Daisuke had a rookie here in a tough spot. Gordon hasn't fared all that well so far in the Majors, and might be pressing. In the second at bat he played the classic game of 0-2 high fastball, but Gordon showed good patience. A broken bat single was the rookie's first Big League knock. Matsuzaka then gave him a very tough look in the third time around with the splitter. It's a pitch that he only started using fairly recently and it looks like a pitch he may be able to use in the Majors more and more.

Ryan Shealy (0-3, 2 strikeouts – 15 pitches: 10 fastballs, 5 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (strike), fastball (inside-ball), fastball (inside-strike), fastball (94 mph low/outside-ball), fastball (outside-line out to right)

#2 - change (outside-strike), fastball (inside-foul), fastball (foul), slider (way outside-ball in the dirt), curve (low-strike three looking)

#3 - fastball (on the hands-foul), slider (high and ugly-ball), fastball (low-foul on a good swing), slider (outside-ugly strike three swinging)

Shealy was a fun matchup. Matsuzaka went predominately fastball to him, and challenged Shealy to catch up. In the second at bat, you see that Daisuke went change to start him off after 5 consecutive fastballs in the first go around. He returned to the fastball, and then sat him down with a combination of the slider and the curve. Nice pitching. The third at bat was similar in that he showed fastball and then worked the slider (his best pitch) to make Shealy look foolish.

Ross Gload (0-3, 2 strikeouts – 11 pitches: 4 fastballs, 7 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (low-ball), fastball (low/in-ball), change (taking-strike), slider (inside-strike), fastball (91 mph outside -swinging strike three)

#2 - hanging change (line out to right)

#3 - curve (strike), slider (low/out-swinging strike), fastball (low-protective swing foul), slider (bounced to the backstop-ball), slider (low-swinging strike three)

Gload had no chance. He tried to stay alive a few times, but I think he had no idea what was coming. He struck out on the fastball outside and the nasty slider, and tried in vain to guess on the first pitch of his second at bat. Matsuzaka never gave him anything easy to hit.

John Buck (1-3, 1 strikeout – 11 pitches: 5 fastballs, 6 offspeed)

#1 - curve (strike), change (strike), fastball (outside-strike three looking)

#2 - curve (outside-strike), fastball (high/higher-swinging strike), fastball (foul), slider (bounced-ball), hanging curve (single to center)

#3 - curve (low-strike), fastball (just outside-ball), fastball (shallow F8)

Matsuzaka had a scouting report of some kind that told him not to throw anything straight with the first pitch to Buck. He featured the curve all three times. Buck was badly fooled along with his other "bottom of the order" compadres, but managed to escape in the second at bat when Matsuzaka foolishly hung a curve after being ahead 1-2. Otherwise, no contest.

Tony Pena, Jr. (0-2 – 10 pitches: 8 fastballs, 3 offspeed)

#1 - fastball (outside-ball), fastball (high-strike), slider (bounced-ball), nice changeup (ground out to the pitcher 1-3)

#2 - fastball (high-ball), fastball (high-ball), fastball (blew it by him-strike), fastball (low-strike), fastball (high/out-foul), fastball (foul), change (ground out to pitcher 1-3)

Pena is a solid rookie, just over from the Braves. He will be a very good player, but he fell for the easiest combination in the Major League book, fastball/change. Both at bats saw him way out in front and grounding out to the pitcher. That was good thinking by Daisuke. Understand the opponent.

There's the recap of game one. I'll keep you posted on more reaction by the fans in Japan, and anything else that may come out in the media related to the debut of Major League Baseball's newest phenomenon.

That's it

2007-04-06T05:23:00.000+09:00

The 7th inning was a 12 pitch affair that saw Daisuke regain his strength and strike out both Shealy and Gload on very tough sliders. He looked more and more like Daisuke Matsuzaka as the game went on. The command of the fastball was good, and the slider, curve, and change worked better and better in the later innings. In the end, his stat line was:

7 IP
6 hits
1 HR
1 ER
1 walk
10 K
108 pitches

If you look back at my prediction, the only thing I missed was the 8th inning and extra 20 pitches. The rest of the numbers were dead on. (Pats self on the back).

Yes, it's Kansas City. Yes, he still has to do this against the Yankees, Tigers, Angels, and so on. Could you have asked for any more in a debut? 10 Ks for Daisuke in his first go around is outstanding. One walk makes it all the more remarkable. The WHIP is 1.000 and the K:BB is 10.00. His 1 game K-rate is 12.86 per 9 innings. I'll be back later today with a batter by batter recap of the game. You'll be able to see the pattern he used to work each man three times through the order. Thanks for reading. Remember, come back later for more....

4, 5, 6

2007-04-06T04:27:00.000+09:00

The 4th inning had Daisuke starting to look like himself a bit. His pace improved, and while the breaking stuff still wasn't sharp, he found enough to sneak a few good ones behind his fastball. 3 up, 3 down, all strikeouts. He's bouncing. Getting his rhythm and his confidence has helped him look relaxed and he carried it over into the 5th inning with 10 consecutive batters retired.

The 5th saw Daisuke in a little trouble. He got ahead of Alex Gordon nicely, and actually jammed him badly with a 95 mph fastball, but the bat broke and the ball went into left center. That was Gordon's first Major League hit. Out of the stretch, Matsuzaka worked Shealy with fastballs again and struck him out. Gload was 1st pitch swinging and lined out. The catcher, Buck, was also dominated and behind in the count, but Matsuzaka hung a curveball badly and lost it to a hit. 1st and 3rd with 2 out. Rookie, Tony Pena, Jr. saw a straight diet of fastballs in the 93 mph range and finally grounded out meekly to the pitcher for the final out. Daisuke responded to trouble the way he usually does, calmly and effectively.

The third time through the order was not kind to Daisuke. DeJesus greeted him with a big home run on a mediocre fastball with little movement. German dropped a little pop up between Lugo and Drew for a hit and watched as Teahan battled and battled a variety of pitches. The umpire called him out on strikes, and a bang-bang play at 2nd on a steal attempt was called out for a strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play. At first glance I thought he was safe, but the replay showed how close it really was. Emil Brown doubled to left center and the umpires were showered with more boos as the crowd felt that would have been the game tying hit. Alas, nothing came of the extra base hit (or the booing) as Alex Gordon looked overmatched, falling behind on splitters before being called out on a 94 mph fastball on the outside black. Varitek set up way outside and Daisuke hit his spot. 1 run and 1 walk against 8 strikeouts through 6. Not a bad debut so far.....

So far, so good

2007-04-06T04:08:00.000+09:00

I had some thoughts about "Live blogging" this game, but it's now 4am in Japan, and I can't muster the energy to do it. Maybe next time.

Daisuke looked nervous to start the game, and a bit cold. It's Top of the 4th now and I think Matsuzaka has done a good job getting through three innings unscathed. He hasn't had his best breaking stuff so far (weather?), but he's changing pace and location nicely to keep hitters off balance. He touched 94 on the gun a few times, and has thrown one or two very nice sliders. The fastball is the key. When he's worked off the fastball, the offspeed pitches have been effective. When he's featured the breaking ball, it hasn't been as strong. Let's see what happens in innings 4-6, shall we?

Check back again for an update, and later in the day I will break this game down batter by batter.

Countdown to Armaggedon

2007-04-05T12:26:00.000+09:00

The way people are talking about the Matsuzaka debut, it's as if we're about to witness the prophecy of the Archangel Gabriel's "end of days", or at least the coming of the Nazgul to the American Midwest. Spring Training has been very exciting and a lot of people have come to know Daisuke Matsuzaka a bit better for having seen him firsthand. You'd have thought that the mythical version of his background would have subsided just a bit with a closer personal experience with the pitcher, but in fact it has grown. To paraphrase Verbal Kint:

He's become a myth, a spook story that managers tell their hitters at night. Don't take your swings, and Daisuke will get you. Ty Cobb always said 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him. Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Daisuke Matsuzaka.

People in Kansas City are tingling at the chance to watch the pitcher make his debut. The Japanese media is flooding Missouri and Red Sox Nation is ready to explode. From Japan, there is little more than standard anticipation for a national hero's performance on the international stage. That, in and of itself, is a big deal, but not nearly as big as the wave of excitement that exists in the US by all accounts. It has come to my attention that NHK aired a segment Thursday morning, Japan time, in which fans interviewed on the street all planned to be awake at 3am for the debut. I'll be there as well. Tomorrow is going to be a sleepy Japan. If any aggressive nations had their sights set on an invasion, Friday would be the day.

Looking ahead to the game, it will be interesting to see how the Royals approach Matsuzaka. None of them have seen him, and he hasn't seen them either. The KC ball club is a mix of youth and veterans and it figures that the younger players stand no chance against the man from Yokohama. I honestly can't see Pena or Gordon doing much against a wily veteran like Matsuzaka. If I had to predict his approach, I would guess that he will challenge the younger guys with the fastball on difficult parts of the plate, and high in the zone, using the change as his out pitch. The veterans will see the change, but I'm guessing the slider will be the killer that finishes the job. My prediction:

8 innings
6 hits
2 walks
11 strikeouts
1 run
128 pitches

The Red Sox may not allow him that many pitches, in which case he'll probably go 7 innings and the other numbers will be adjusted down accordingly. I know it's silly to guess on something like this, but it's all in the name of fun. Hang on folks. Away we go.

The Spring

2007-04-02T21:22:00.000+09:00

The Spring has wrapped with a final Matsuzaka go round. It wasn't his best performance, but it was certainly enough to get by. Matsuzaka's problem the last 2 starts has been his abnormally high walk totals. It is apparent that he is displeased by the lack of control he's displayed after being able to hit any spot he's wanted for the last 3 years. I've been saying since he signed with the Sox that there will be times when we are all left scratching our heads about a game, as a result of the adjustments he'll be making to a new league, a new culture, and a heavy travel routine.

The final tune up for Daisuke was a 4 inning affair in which he gave up only 2 hits, while striking out 7. The downside was the 4 walks and 3 runs that he gave up to Philadelphia, including a 2-run homer to red hot Pat Burrell. That's the good and the bad of it. We'll see what kind of fireworks the man from Yokohama brings with him in his regular season opener against KC. I'm guessing you'll see the best of Daisuke Matsuzaka in that start and a lot of people will be super impressed. Let the naysayers do their nay saying now, while they can.

The last thing I wanted to do this Spring, before things get going, is compare the exhibition numbers of Matsuzaka and Kei Igawa. You all know I'm a Yankee fan and that I'm hoping for good things from Igawa. As I've been singing the praises of Matsuzaka to anyone who will listen, I've also been talking up Igawa. Yankee fans need to hear me tell them that Igawa isn't in the same ballpark as Matsuzaka, while Sox fans need to be told that he's a legitimate MLB starter, who is more than a consolation prize. The truth lies in the middle. Matsuzaka is a brilliant once in a generation talent. Igawa is a strong Major League #4, with #3 potential. Here's the stat lines:

Igawa's enemy is the walk. Always has been. Matsuzaka has been plagued by walk-itis in the Spring, but should get that straightened out soon. His 10.80 K/9 ratio is stunning. If he had walked 1 less batter he'd have a WHIP under 1.000 and if he'd gotten Pat Purrell out rather than surrendering a 2-run homer he'd have a 2.08 ERA. Nice.

For Igawa's part, the WHIP is about where I expect it to finish. His ERA will be a little higher. That K-rate is fair and I think he'll get the walks a bit more under control. I'm predicting 17 wins for Daisuke and 15 for Igawa. Matsuzaka's numbers will be better across the board, but Igawa will get the slightly better run support. There's nothing left to it, but to do it. Let's get ready to rumble......

The Patriot Ledger

2007-03-28T10:35:00.000+09:00

Greetings Matsuzaka Watch fans.

Keep an eye on The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass. this season. I'll be writing a few things about our pal Matsuzaka for them over the course of the season, and they've been kind enough to link to me at their South of Boston website. My first piece is in the newspaper and on their site, and you may want to swing by to give it a read. If you've been coming here for a while, it may cover some old ground. Even so, I think the more I write about Daisuke, the more the picture crystallizes about what he means to both countries and both fan bases. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 in this series from Florida and from Boston. Thanks to the good people of The Patriot Ledger.

Koshien @ Baseball Japan

2007-03-27T22:50:00.000+09:00

Atori Ota

Make sure you head over to Baseball Japan to read up on my coverage of the 79th Spring Koshien event. I was a bit late on the first entry, but it will only get better and more detailed from here. Pay particular attention to the Teikyo High School pitcher Atori Ota. He is legit and will become a household name in the future. Mark my words.

You Can't Hit What You Can't See

2007-03-27T11:16:00.001+09:00

The hits just keep on comin'.....or not. In what turned out to be a strange and wild affair for Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Red Sox, the first year pitcher from Japan managed to go five full innings of work without giving up a single hit. In fact, Matsuzaka did walk 5 batters on 104 pitches, showing an uncharacteristically wild side and generally struggled to get comfortable all day. The Sox also ended up being too wild for their own good dropping a 5-0 game, all 5 runs coming in the 7th.

In the end, Matsuzaka has only allowed one hit and one run over his last 11 2/3 innings. Over that same period he has struck out 13 batters and now sports an ERA of 2.04 on the Spring. Overall, here are Daisuke's Spring Training numbers to date:

17.2 IP
9 hits
7 walks
1 HBP
4 ER
19 Ks
2.04 ERA
.906 WHIP
9.68 K/9
2.71 K/BB
4.59 H/9

The K/BB ratio took a big hit in the Reds' game, but that would self-correct if this were the longer regular season. The main point is that he doesn't give up runs. Matsuzaka's great gift is his poise and the bulldog mentality that allows him to be this good, despite being as bad as he was against the Reds, if you follow me. One more start in the Spring, and then the real show begins. In the meantime, keep watching with me here and grab yourself a brand spankin' new authentic Matsuzaka jersey from Majestic by clicking one of the links in the right margin. (plug, plug, plug....)

Let's go Daisuke!!

Amazon Associate

2007-03-26T21:03:00.000+09:00

Hey, Matsuzaka Watch readers.

I've gone semi-commercial here, having joined the Amazon Associates program. I'm hoping that my loyal readers will support this blog by purchasing something from the featured items in the right margin. I don't have any wild ideas about getting rich from this program, but a few extra dollars will help me to buy diapers if all goes well.

If you have plans to buy any Matsuzaka apparel, or if you're looking for a good book to read, I would be more than grateful to you if you'd consider purchasing it from the links I provide here. I get a very small percentage of each purchase, so if you like what I do here and happen to be in the market for something, why not click and help me to make a few extra dollars for my efforts? Most items are found just below the "Archives" in the right margin.

Your patronage is much appreciated. Now back to your regularly scheduled Matsuzaka Mania!!

Mike Plugh

Piracy

2007-03-22T22:32:00.001+09:00

Lets face it. Those of us who know what Matsuzaka is, expect him to have performances like his most recent. Nearly six innings of 1 hit, 1 walk, 1 run baseball with 7 strikeouts is par for the Daisuke course in my book. I realize that the Pirates are probably the closest thing to an NPB level franchise in the Major Leagues, so the excitement must be tempered, but the results are the results.

Daisuke hits batters on occasion. He hit batters in Japan and he's going to hit batter in the United States. The leadoff buzz of Chris Duffy was less a pitch with a message behind it than simply one that got away. It's been my experience with this player that some of his finest performances also feature multiple hit batsmen. That's just the way it is. Duffy was moved to third on two ground outs and scored on Adam LaRoche's single. The remainder of the game was a 13 up and 13 down affair, 7 of which were Ks. Dominating.

Daisuke's pitching line for the Spring now looks like this:

12.2 IP
9 hits
2 walks
1 HBP
4 ER
13 Ks
2.84 ERA
0.868 WHIP
9.24 K/9
6.50 K/BB
6.40 H/9

Let's now look at those numbers projected to 186.1 IP, the total he produced for Seibu last season. For comparison, you'll find the actual stats in parentheses next to these calculations.

186.1 IP
132 hits (139)
29 BB (33)
15 HBP (3)
59 ER (43)
191 Ks (200)
2.84 ERA (2.13)
0.868 WHIP (0.923)
9.24 K/9 (9.66)
6.50 K/BB (6.06)
6.40 H/9 (6.71)

It's early. It's Spring Training. The numbers are ridiculously similar nonetheless. I have said all along that Matsuzaka is a Jordanesque figure who rises to the level of the competition. He's the kind of fish that will grow to the size of the tank, and when the tank is big enough to accommodate Johan Santana, Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt, Roy Halladay, and Pedro Martinez, the tank is big enough to accommodate Daisuke Matsuzaka. Watch his ratios at the end of Spring and then follow me as I chart them through his first 5-10 starts. I bet you'll find a shaky game here or there, but in the end the ratios will look like this.

Verducci's Take on Daisuke

2007-03-21T18:14:00.000+09:00

Tom Verducci's latest piece at SI.com is almost enough to make this entire blog obsolete. I've been at this for about a year. I pride myself on knowing that I was on the Daisuke beat before anyone else in this business save perhaps Rob Neyer and Will Carroll. It wasn't long ago that people laughed at the idea that a Japanese player could succeed in the Majors. Now, I get e-mail after e-mail every day asking, "Who's next?"

The article is a 7-page masterpiece, detailing everything Matsuzaka. The most valuable part of the story is its attention on the shift in attitude regarding pitchers' workloads and pitch counts in general. Verducci gets it, and many of baseball's top organizations are beginning to get it too. The Japanese way of training may revolutionize the American game, and Daisuke is one of the most important figures in that process moving forward. I pulled a couple of excerpts that struck me:

"After being part of this for three years," former big league manager Bobby Valentine says by e-mail from Japan, where he's the manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, "I am convinced we do a bad job of coaching in the U.S. for pitchers."

Fact is, Matsuzaka would not be Matsuzaka if he had been born in the States. Says Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, "I'm not even sure he would have been drafted out of high school, as a 5'11" righthander who was pushed like that at such a young age."

This strikes me because it means we may be missing out on pitchers that could make Major League impact simply for a lack of training expertise. Yuki Saito, following in Matsuzaka's footsteps, is a prime example of an undersized guy that has the potential to enter the Majors in 3-4 years time and dominate. He just completed a Waseda University training camp in Okinawa where he threw 1000 pitches over 6 days. That sounds insane to Americans, but it is a mandatory training regimen for Waseda starters. Matsuzaka may be the Jackie Robinson of Japanese pitchers if he can break the Irabu wall, and simultaneously change the perception of smaller pitchers who train intensely like Saito, for example.

Think the Red Sox were concerned about his MRI when they posted $51 million?

"When Matsuzaka's pictures came back, the Red Sox were shocked at what they saw. The MRIs were whistle-clean."

The article says that Daisuke doesn't ice his arm and never has. Go figure. I think there's so much we don't know about how Japanese pitchers train. I'm sure there will be more articles like this to follow, and I'll be curious to talk this over with Will Carroll again soon. More on that later. The article also talks about the idea that Matsuzaka's pitching ability, both physical and mental, appears to be lining up with the Cy Youngs of the game, and that all eyes are on him for a run at 20 games if he stays healthy. I'm biased, so take that for what it's worth. Read the article for yourself, and then stop back here to comment.

Less than Perfect Storm

2007-03-17T20:17:00.000+09:00

Again, my friends, I was unable to catch the performance of our hero as the game time in Japan posed a dilemma. Sleep or Daisuke. In the regular season, the choice would be Daisuke. No question. In the preseason....you know the answer already.

The thing is, it hardly mattered as the 2 innings of work that Matsuzaka was able to get in before the rain started was probably not all that enlightening. I find the walk that he was able to work against Hong-Chi Kuo fascinating, despite everyone around the world knowing that he wasn't going to swing. That's disgraceful. He would end up scoring on a home run by Eric Hinske.

Matsuzaka went back to the bullpen for 77 pitches after the game was delayed by rain, and made sure to get his work in. That's a good thing. The recap provided by Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe told me all I needed to know about the matchups between ML hitters and the man of mystery:

"Though the two minor leaguers scheduled to stand in against Matsuzaka didn't get a bat on the ball, a few Dodgers did. Rafael Furcal began the game by smoking a ground-rule double down the right-field line, followed by a sacrifice bunt by Juan Pierre. With Furcal on third, Marlon Anderson blooped a high changeup into left field, scoring the Dodgers' lone run. Olmedo Saenz followed by lining a high fastball for a single, putting runners on first and second. But that was it, with Matsuzaka using his slider to help close out the inning."

The part of that story that makes my skin crawl is that Dodgers' manager Grady Little decided to sacrifice with Rafael Furcal on 2nd and no one out in the first inning and Juan Pierre at the plate. The Dodgers paid Juan Pierre $44 million over 5 years, despite his career .727 OPS and a horrific 86 OPS+. If you're going to pay him that much money, I assume you expect him to hit. According to the numbers, a bunt in that particular situation actually contributed a -2.8% chance of winning the ballgame. To put it in plain words, you are hurting your team more often than not. What happened next? As you just read, Marlon Anderson got a single, scoring Furcal. I assume that Furcal would have scored from second on a single with his speed. We'll never know because Grady Little gave away an out to find out. For good measure, Olmedo Saenz' single would definitely have plated Furcal had Pierre and Anderson failed to do so. In the end, the Dodgers bunted, got one run, and promptly gave up 5 to the Red Sox. Where is Earl Weaver when you need him?

A Little Reading

2007-03-14T07:27:00.001+09:00

My first contribution to Baseball Prospectus went up today (subscription only). The piece is about baseball in Japan, the status it's afforded, and the importance of accounting for cultural factors in analyzing the style of play when compared to the Majors. It's more of a narrative piece to introduce my work there, but you may enjoy it. If you don't have a subscription, I highly recommend it. I don't say that because I now write for them, as I was a subscriber and a big fan long before this relationship ever began.

Also, I recently posted at Baseball Japan a background piece on Japan's next big hitter. No, not Kosuke Fukudome (MLB ETA: 2008). No, not Norichika Aoki (MLB ETA: unknown). This is a 17-year old phenom named Sho Nakata of Osaka Toin High School. He is a home run machine with size, power, and a rifle arm. He's in the rotation as a sometimes starter and features a 94 mph fastball, a curve, slider, and palm ball.

His favorite player is Daisuke Matsuzaka, but he toured the US a few years ago for the Continental Amateur Baseball Association's 15-Year Old World Series, winning the MVP, and announcing that he wanted to come back in a few years to pitch for the Yankees. With the posting of Matsuzaka, maybe he has his eyes set on the Red Sox now, but the Twins and Mets have scouted him, and he's on the MLB radar. Make no mistake, he's no pitcher, as good as he's been. He is a power hitting right fielder with a super high ceiling. One way or another he'll be a professional next season, either as a starter in the NPB or a farmhand in the US. Watch as this unfolds at Baseball Japan....

Baseball Prospectus

2007-03-12T10:42:00.000+09:00

I'd like to announce that I will be writing for the outstanding baseball think tank Baseball Prospectus during the 2007 season, covering Japanese baseball in all its various forms. This is an exciting opportunity to expand the coverage of the Japanese game in an English language medium via the most respected and intellectual organization in the baseball writing community.

Baseball Japan, and the other blogs I have created to cover specific players, will continue as a source for information and analysis on the Japanese game. These blogs will only be made better by the association with BP, and I hope to provide expanded and in-depth coverage of the issues raised and examined in my work there. These sources should provide a synergy that will help the rabid baseball fan dig deeper into the specifics of the sport in Japan, while also giving the casual fan a broader scope on the personalities and cultural points that exist across the Pacific.

Thank you for your continued support here and across the range of my other work. Please drop by Baseball Prospectus as often as possible to read our work and make sure to pick up your copy of Baseball Prospectus 2007 for the skinny on anything and everything related to Major League Baseball in 2007. See you around!

Rough Going

2007-03-12T07:27:00.000+09:00

Daisuke got a little taste of adversity today after breezing through Boston College and the Florida Marlins. The Orioles managed to go deep on him twice, including a 3rd inning blast on a straight fastball down the heart of the plate by Jon Knott and another deep shot off a similarly flat and centered pitch in the 4th by Jason DuBois. Neither of those players is a quality Major League batter, but in the Major Leagues even the fringe player can launch a fat fastball into orbit. Welcome Mr. Matsuzaka.

The more I think about it, the problem with Matsuzaka's outing wasn't his pitching as much as his thinking. If you have two players who aren't up to making the Major Leagues, like Knott and DuBois, they aren't going to swing at a good curve and they can't handle the slider. That's why they're in the minors. The only pitch they are looking to take a big hack at is a fastball in the middle part of the plate. Even career minor leaguers can hit home runs on those pitches. With those type players, trying to make a roster, you have to assume that they are looking dead red and then you show high to set them up for a middle/in change up.

Truth be told, I wasn't able to see this game. It was on very early in the morning in Japan and I have work in about an hour. I woke up to see the highlights of the action. From what I can gather from the limited snapshot of the other at bats the fastball was otherwise well located on the corners, and the breaking ball looked much improved from the Marlins outing. It looks like he K'ed Melvin Mora twice and Gibbons once. Those are decent big league hitters, so there was really some good and some bad. Better location on the two fastballs and we might be talking about a 4 inning, 4 hit, no walk, shutout. It's Spring Training.

If I can manage to see the game action on a replay tonight, I'll replace this little blurb with a more extensive analysis.

Kansas City Sam

2007-03-10T11:09:00.000+09:00

I had the chance to speak by phone with Kansas City Star reporter Sam Mellinger some weeks ago and we chatted about Matsuzaka, Japanese baseball, and a number of other things. He's a very nice guy, and I hope to speak with him again in the future. He's working on a number of things related to Matsuzaka and Japan now, and a couple of his articles have been featured in the Star the last couple of days with the appearance of Daisuke imminent. Matsuzaka has also been penciled in as the 3rd starter during the regular season, by some accounts, and that would have him on pace to open his Major League career versus the Royals. Sam will be on top of it all, so follow his work leading up to the big day.

Matsuzaka Mania Just Getting Started (3/7)

Who's Counting? (3/8)

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Mr. International

2007-03-08T22:07:00.000+09:00

Lest anyone believe that Red Sox Nation, or the American nation, has the market cornered on Matsuzaka Mania, check out the Nikkan Sports page dedicated to "Dice-K" coverage. It's all in Japanese, but there are pretty pictures. I don't recall this ever being done for Ichiro or Matsui. We're through the looking glass people....

I had to comment on the picture below. I love these kids. What a great effort in asking for Matsuzaka to sign their ball. The Japanese is perfectly awful, but score one for effort. I have to think that they typed English directly into AltaVista's BabelFish and it spit out this Japanese. Excellent.

A Real Test

2007-03-07T08:54:00.000+09:00

The Florida Marlins stood in the way of Daisuke Matsuzaka and his building reputation as a top flight Major League pitcher. Boston College was a test to some, who still doubted the ability of a Japanese pitcher to succeed in the US, but in general it was more of a warm up. Those players showed almost zero plate discipline and had to be both excited and intimidated to be on the same field with the Red Sox. The Marlins are a tough group of young players who made the NL East race very interesting for a while despite being made up of recently called up minor leaguers and promising prospects.

Before the game, NHK focused on Matsuzaka's warm ups on the sidelines and the announcers chatted about the ins and outs of life in the Majors, and such. Daisuke wore the navy blue version of the Spring Training uniform and worked up a healthy sweat in the bright Flordia sun. Heading back to the dugout to prepare for game time, the cameras followed the pitcher as he talked with teammates. We watched as Matsuzaka stripped off his sweat-soaked jersey and "under armor" shirt. I was surprised that the cameras chose to focus so long on him as he stood half nude and resplendent in his bulging love handles. We continued to watch as he put on his new clothing, but there they were for everyone to see. I have to say, as a long time Matsuzaka fan, his conditioning is very poor. He's always been a little on the round side, but I never had the impression that he was carrying around a spare tire like he is these days. All the time he was supposedly working out in California, I'm sure he was up to other things He certainly wasn't serious about his conditioning.

I read in the news that Daisuke threw a bullpen session just a day earlier. Throwing before game day is not common practice in the Major Leagues and the Sox have let him go about his usual routine. Terry Francona even remarked that the club was still trying to feel out how Matsuzaka works and I think it's clear that they are going to err on the side of Matsuzaka's comfort zone rather than their own. I don't see a problem with this, but there is certainly a big danger in playing the whole process down the middle.

Either you are going to let a pitcher do what he wants or you are going to control the routine. If you meet halfway, all you are doing is creating a recipe for the unknown. The unknown is death to pitchers. If Daisuke follows his own plan, then he needs to be given that freedom all year long and on game day as well. If the Sox want to take more control during the season, watching his pitch counts carefully and so on, they need to get him used to it now. What has worked for Daisuke in the past will work in the future if it continues unhindered. If you make adjustments to it, you enter the unknown. Only by taking total control of the situation and understanding all the methods and science behind your decision will allow you to understand what it happening. Anything in between is an experiment. as long as they are aware of it, best of luck. That's just my opinion.

As for the game, it was clear that Matsuzaka was overstriding and his failure to control the breaking stuff was the result. After the game, he commented that he'd pitched at around 40-50% effectiveness. If today's game was 40-50% of what he has, Red Sox Nation has it's new hero. He wasn't great, but he was almost unhittable at times. Here's a batter by batter breakdown of the start:

1st Inning

Hanley Ramirez: fastball (strike), fastball (hit back to pitcher, 1-3)

Dan Uggla: curve (strike), fastball (low, ball), fastball (foul), fastball (single to center) Tripling up on the fastball cost him a hit here.

Jeremy Hermida: fastball (strike), change (pop to short) The nice Matsuzaka change did it's job.

Jason Stokes: curve (foul), fastball (inside, ball), fastball (foul), slider (high, foul), slider (outside, ball), change (inside, ball), slider (strike out swinging)

2nd Inning

Joe Borchard: curve (strike), change? (high and outside), change? (high and outside), slider (low and inside), fastball (swinging strike), Matsuzaka shakes off Varitek 3 times, slider (low, ball 4) It's clear that Matsuzaka trusts his slider a lot. He wanted it as an out pitch, and shook 3 times until he got it. The location today was bad and that pitch never had its normal bite.

Miguel Olivo: fastball (called strike on the outer part), fastball (foul), fastball (foul), NASTY slider (low and outside), fastball (swinging K) It appeared to me that Matsuzaka stopped overstriding from the stretch and located his pitches very well. He went heavy on the fastball which also tells me that he was being competitive. Using the slider and breaking stuff early it was clear that he was working on things. With a runner on he went straight heat and it worked. The slider he mixed in was of the Daisuke+ variety and Olivo did a good job of taking it. That pitch will be a huge out pitch in 2007 if he features it like he did in this at bat.

John Gall: fastball (low and outside), slider (outside), at this point the NHK announcer remarked that Matsuzaka still looked a bit "green" meaning "not in top form yet", FAT fastball (one bounce ground rule double) Runners on 2nd and 3rd, one out. Going repeatedly to the fastball will hurt any pitcher, no matter how good he is. A guy like Gall knows that a guy who is missing with all his breaking stuff will have to throw one in his zone sooner or later and he got it. Matsuzaka was super cool though. He never gets fazed. That's his gift.

Scott Seabol: slider (low and outside, called a strike), fastball (low, called strike), fastball (foul), slider (foul), fastball (inside, ball), Varitek and Matsuzaka talk it over. I read somewhere that Varitek asked him about the slider and Matsuzaka gave a thumbs up. slider (called strike 3). Tough.

Eric Reed: fastball (popped up bunt to 2B) Why on Earth would a player attempt a bunt with two outs and runners in scoring position? Take a few pitches. See you in the minors Reed-O. Matsuzaka got a break in this inning. I thought he looked good against Seabol, but he was able to get ahead on some close pitches. Reed took him off the hook with a stupid plate appearance. A squibber through the infield would have scored at least one run, and maybe two. Credit to Daisuke. He did his job and stayed very cool in his first Big League jam.

3rd Inning

Hanley Ramirez: slider (low and outside), fastball? (over Ramirez' head), slider (outside part, strike), slider (high and inside), fastball (foul), fastball (scorching liner into Matsuzaka's waiting glove) I noted at the start of this at bat how big Ramirez looks this year. He seems to have put on some muscle and looks to be in great condition. I imagine we'll see some power to go with his speed in 2007. It could be a break out season if that's the case. Matsuzaka again got lucky here. Out of the full windup he couldn't locate his offspeed stuff again, and had to throw more fastballs. A guy like Ramirez will jump on that in his second or third at bat.

Dan Uggla: fastball (foul, good wood), He was looking for that, change (popped out to 3B) Matsuzaka saw that Uggla was looking fastball and went to his goofy change. Uggla had no chance and was WAY out in front. Along with the slider, the change will be very very important to Daisuke as he challenges MLB hitters in their 2nd and 3rd go arounds in the order.

Jeremy Hermida: change (low, called strike), slider (inside and low), change (popped out to 2B) Hermida was also looking for a fastball in there. Matsuzaka's adjustment in the 3rd inning to the change served him well, and should help him to get out to a fast start for the Sox.

He wasn't sharp, but the pitches he trusts will get him some wins while he's still working out the kinks. I'll be curious to see how he continues his workouts from here. I think the Sox are curious too. The line: 3 innings, 2 hits, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts, no runs. More soon....

Yuki Saito Watch

2007-03-07T00:48:00.001+09:00

This blog has been a long time in the making, and there is perhaps no player I am more excited about in Japan than the star of the 2006 Summer Koshien, Yuki Saito. The Waseda University season is about to start, and so is my intense coverage of Saito's young career. In 2011, he will be a free agent at 23 years old and perhaps open to the market in the United States. Keep an eye on him and support Yuki Saito Watch.

I Made It

2007-03-05T21:35:00.000+09:00

Recently I posted about ESPN's coverage of the Asian game, and noted that I missed the cut in the pieces on their website. It appears that I was premature in that statement, as Eric Neel's latest piece on who to watch is now available, and yours truly gets a little mention at the bottom of the article. Thanks to the always informative and enjoyable Eric Neel for the mention. Look for more from me very soon at Baseball Prospectus. More on that to come.....

The Monster is Here

2007-03-03T09:00:00.000+09:00

The first meaningful pitches of Matsuzaka's Major League career were thrown today, albeit it against Boston College. The eyes of the world were on him, and you could sense the buzz that emanated from the Florida Field of Dreams. NESN's feed was broadcast on NHK this morning and I sat with my coffee to see what "kaibutsu" would unleash in his first go around.

The first thing I noticed was the abject fear on the faces of the BC kids. That may be a little strong, but it was patently obvious that they were intimidated and flailed away at everything Daisuke threw at them. In general, breaking pitches and changeups led the BC batters, and we saw a number of mid-to-low 70s changes that simply fooled the amped up youngsters. The fastball was mixed in to keep them honest at around 92mph, and was very close to being on the black when he missed. I thought the first batter of the 2nd was out on a nasty low fastball that seemed to catch the lower part of the plate. Daisuke and Varitek shook off the disappointment and got him to bounce out weakly.

Had this been a test against Major Leaguers, I would have done a batter by batter analysis of his start, but these are overmatched collegiate ballplayers, of whom I know nothing. It has no value. Look for a more comprehensive pitch-by-pitch look at his next start. For this start to his MLB career there is only one last point to discuss. The interviews.

Matsuzaka did an NESN interview with a female reporter that I'm not familiar with. Nation fans will know, and I'd appreciate your help in filling in the blanks on these things as we go this season. The reporter led with a question about his performance that went something like, "You gave up a leadoff double and then retired the next 6 batters, what do you think about your performance." I think that's an atrocious question to ask anyone as a journalist, but I suppose some players would answer it with an interesting response. Asking a Japanese player that question is not all that different than asking him if he thinks he's the most handsome man in the whole wide world. By cultural imperative the only answer that a guy can give is "I did my best. I'll try harder next time." Matsuzaka couldn't even muster that. He stuttered, thought for what seemed like 30 seconds, stuttered again, and asked himself aloud, "Uh. What should I say about that?" Finally, he settled on the enlightening "Ma, yokkata desu ne." That translates to, "Well, I was okay."

The level of comfort that Daisuke has with the American reporters is clearly something he'll need to work on. He smiles, and giggles, and looks perplexed at the questions he's asked. The Japanese interview in contrast was far more enlightening, as his countrymen give him the type of questions he's prepared to handle. The most interesting piece of info that came out with NHK was that Daisuke feels his legs aren't in good condition yet. He said that he hasn't been able to throw as much as he wants, and feels he's behind where he should be.

The other question that NESN asked him was about how he felt the MLB strikezone compares with NPB. Another silly question. Home plate umpire Rust Batcher isn't even an MLB ump, as far as I can tell. Matsuzaka threw a total of 26 pitches in front of him, compared to 8 years of pitching in the NPB. Who writes this stuff? Terrible. Anyway, more good stuff to come!! Stay tuned.

ESPN Asia

2007-03-01T16:25:00.001+09:00

ESPN has a rather large spread on the sport of baseball in Asia at their website. It discusses Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China and there are several interesting pieces to check out. I have spoken and e-mailed with Eric Neel on a number of occasions, and he is a tremendously nice guy. I was hoping to make the cut in his latest piece about the bridge between Japan and the US, but it just wasn't to be. I'm down, but not out. Give it a read, and support the building interest in the East Asian wave. It makes for good reading, and helps to drive the popularity of writing like mine.

The Transition

2007-02-28T06:08:00.000+09:00

Wright Thompson of ESPN has a very nice piece up today about the difficult transition from Japan to the US, and highlights some of the major cultural challenges for players seeking to master a new level of competition. I know hundreds of people who have struggled to make a life outside Japan, without the additional pressures of training and play at the Major League level and the travel associated with such and undertaking. It's not easy. There are however, musicians, scholars, business owners, salaried employees and their families in your community. Take this into account when you read Wright Thompson's piece.

The Real Gyro-Secret

2007-02-26T21:05:00.000+09:00

My parents are in Japan this week, all the way from the East Coast of the United States to meet their first grandchild. It's their second time in Japan, the first being my wedding in Kyoto almost two years ago. What to do with the parents during the day? I've elected to take several trips to key cultural spots in Akita Prefecture to give them a sense of the history, culture, and flavor of this Northern region of the country. What better way to do that than to take them deep into the heart of the Oga Peninsula to visit the Shinzan Shinto Shrine, home of the legend of Namahage?

Namahage is a Japanese bogeyman. He is an ogre who terrorizes the people of this small rural community, and has done so for hundreds of years....if not longer. I'll cut and paste some notes from the Shinzan Shrine's website to give you the background on this legendary fiend, before I tell you about his connection to the gyroball.

"Legend has it that the (Chinese)Han emperor brought five demonic ogres with him to Japan a little more than two millennia ago. These oni, as they are most commonly called in Japanese, stole crops and young women from Oga's villages. The villagers dicided to trick these ogres, promising to give up all their young women if the demons could build a stone staircase of one thousand stairs in a single night. If, on the other hand, the oni failed to reach the local temple to which the stairs were to be built, they would have to leave Oga never to return again. The ogres accepted, and had reached 999 stairs when a quick-witted villager imitated a cock crowing for the arrival of down. The surprised and dismayed oni fled, never to be seen again...."

On New Year’s Eve, pairs of Namahage return to the villages to cause havoc. They enter homes and demand to know if everyone has been working hard and caring for the elderly members of the family. The villagers try to appease the Namahage by offering sake and food, but eventually the ogres search the homes for signs of small children. They threaten to take the children with them to the mountain if they are not satisfied that everyone is putting in their best effort to tend to the crops and care for the elderly. Only when satisfied with a promise for the following year, and some material things, will the Namahage give their blessings for a good harvest and leave once again. This is repeated every New Year's Eve. (This is actually a real ritual where local people dresses as Namahage enter local homes and truly terrorize little kids. It's a bit painful to watch the film of this ritual, seeing the abject fear on the little boys and girls' faces, but it's a very very old custom. Go figure.)

My parents were highly entertained by the performance of the Namahage's story, and the museum in his honor. We climbed the steps to the Shrine and made a few prayers and an offering. It was only when we were leaving did the unthinkable happen. I needed to find a restroom before putting everyone in the car and shuttling the family back to civilization. I had the parents wait at the entrance to the shrine, while I headed around back to the toilet. It was a bit dark and nestled in the trees behind the building, so I had a bit of a creepy feeling as if I was being watched. Before I was able to enter the facility, I heard the crunching of leaves and felt the steamy breath of the Namahage on the back of my neck. I was frozen.

In his thunderous and ancient Japanese, he said, "You. You've been working hard, but you are no closer to what you wish to know, fool."

I was stunned and could only stand firm in one spot, anxiously awaiting his next pronouncement. "Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you?! Speak up!" he boomed.

"Uh...no. I guess you want my boy or something, right? Maybe I can buy you a sake, and we can talk it over", I replied.

Namahage wailed and thrust his giant butcher's knife at me. He reached into his straw robe and just as I thought I was finished he pulled out......a baseball. I was puzzled. First, why was the Namahage appearing to me here? What did he want from me? Second, what did he mean by "no closer to what I wish to know"?" Then there was the baseball. It was all too weird, and I shook my head trying to clear the cobwebs.

"The gyroball, Mike-san. The gyroball. That is what you seek, and only the Namahage has the answer", the gruesome thing bellowed. I bowed politely, reached into my pocket, and pulled out a 10,000 yen bill as an offering. He laughed.

"I have no need for money. I just want to set the record straight", he said. "I am the keeper of the gyroball. Stupid Matsuzaka. Why should he get all the publicity? I taught him everything he knows."

This was all too much. I had to ask him, "The gyroball isn't a magic pitch. It's just a really new way of throwing an old fashioned breaking pitch, right?"

"That's what Will Carroll wants you to think", he replied. "He also learned the pitch from me, but he never gives me an ounce of credit. Stupid Montefusco. Stupid Niezer. What about Namahage? All I want is for you to tell my story. Tell them that the ancient knowledge of the gyroball comes from an ancient line of Chinese ogres. Only then will they believe. If you do this for me, I will bless you with 1,000 bountiful harvests."

I had to tell him that I had no interest in harvests, but he simply took ten steps back, glared into my eyes, went into a windup, and threw the baseball straight at my head. I was terrified. The funny thing is, the rifle spin on the pitch gave it a kind of late breaking effect that sent the ball past me and into the darkness of the forest. When I looked back to watch it disappear, the Namahage laughed and ran off, never to be seen again. My parents don't believe me. Maybe you won't either. The thing is, I have a picture....sort of. Just tell me this isn't proof that his words aren't true. Judge for yourself.

ESPN and the Gyroball

2007-02-24T09:21:00.000+09:00

The ESPN "E-Ticket" piece on the gyroball is now available on-line. In my conversation with Will Carroll a few weeks ago, he mentioned that he was excited about the piece and I've been making daily checks of late to find the link. This morning as I drank my coffee it appeared. Finally, something to sink my teeth into from the Sports and Entertainment leaders....

The piece is written by Patrick Hruby and is called "Chasing the Demon Sphere" and notes that Hruby will be searching for "sports' Loch Ness Monster". I had a feeling that I was going to be disappointed in it as soon as I saw that headline. Nevertheless, I gave it a read. The writing is interesting, written in a semi-diary style with loads of e-mail exchanges to trace each step in search of the correct story behind the pitch. He makes all the right moves.

Checked out the Japanese presentations on the science behind the pitch. Contacted Wayne Graczyk of The Japan Times to ask about it. (Wayne and I have traded a few e-mails, and he's a good read. Keep an eye on the link to his work.) Hruby makes the mistake of contacting Bobby V. to ask about it. I kid. Bobby V. is a great source of info about the sport over here, but he contradicts himself repeatedly if you go back and trace his comments over the years, and sounds like a crackpot on occasion. Contacted Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports. Will Carroll in the house! Anthony Montefusco, who throws gyro-pitches. Bought the gyroball book. Talked to Mark Allen. Attempted to meet Joey Niezer. Went to the Japanese Embassy in DC to ask for a translation of the book (which is a bit bizarre). Worked with an English-speaking Japanese sportswriter out of Seattle to get more info from the laboratory that developed the pitch. Tried to set up a physics experiment to test everything out. Gave up.

The only criticism I have about the article is that all that information is available on the dear old internet. I've taken almost every step that Hruby did to research the pitch, and I didn't have to go nearly as far to get exactly the same info, and exactly the same conclusion. He does the journalistic due diligence, and finds out for himself, though. Good move.

The pitch exists. It's not a Bugs Bunny Looptie-Loop ball. It's a nice breaking pitch. No one ever claimed that it broke 3-feet sideways, because it doesn't. It's not a big deal, except that it's new and has potential to save a few arms, add a little wrinkle to some pitchers' arsenals, and is a triumph of sports science in its commitment to innovation. I was looking for a lot more from ESPN, frankly. I hoped to see some discussion of a test. The network failed to provide Hruby with a single videographer, and couldn't pull any strings to even work with a single Major League pitcher. Hruby does a very nice job and I give him a lot of credit for showing the ESPN readership the many important voices that need to be heard in researching the pitch. Nice entertainment, but Baseball Prospectus would have done it more scientifically, in my opinion. Hruby deserves kudos. ESPN, not so much. Give it a read and judge for yourself.

Here We Go....

2007-02-23T12:03:00.000+09:00

So, on Day Three of Spring Training, Daisuke hit the bullpen for a 103-pitch session. Day Three.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's beginning to look like the Sox are going to let him do whatever he wants. How will this play out down the road? Will he be throwing 100 pitches in the pen every day during the season like he did with Seibu? I guarantee he wants to, but he probably shouldn't. This could be the first glimpse at the free rein Matsuzaka will have over his own workout routine for the Sox. If he does what he did with Seibu no one will complain. If he hurts himself, or wears out in September and October, heads will roll.

No doomsday forecast here, but it's a huge red flag that we will all watch as we move forward.

Okajima Day

2007-02-20T21:37:00.000+09:00

Mike Edelman over at MVN's "Firebrand of the AL" has written a nice piece on Hideki Okajima, cutting me off at the pass. Before my last piece "The Gut" came up, I was gearing up to do a little feature on the forgotten Japanese pitcher of the 2007 Spring. I won't get into it in great detail here, as I think he's done a nice job covering the basics, but I think my two cents are appropriate having seen him pitch several times.

Like Daisuke, and Ichiro, Okajima married a well-known television announcer named Yuka Kurihara in 2001. She left her NHK job in 2003 to give birth to their first born son in January of 2004, and followed a year later with the birth of their first girl. Mrs. Okajima has worked for many organizations in her career spanning radio and television and was a reporter at the Nagano Winter Olympics some years ago now. She did work for NHK, as I mentioned, Fuji Television's Pro Yakyu News, and even a bit of work for CNN Headline News. She comes from a prestigious academic background, having graduated from the Foreign Language division of Sophia University, with a concentration in French. She was also named "Miss Sophia" while studying at the famous university in Tokyo. I'm certain that she will be an important part of his adjustment to life in the United States, and should make herself well liked by those around the Red Sox organization.

As for the pitcher, Hideki Okajima features an unusually low release point which often makes his control an adventure. His hard looping curve ball is his featured pitch, and he often ties up lefties badly when he is locating well. Lefties only hit Okajima to the tune of .186 last season, while righties managed .254 against him. He had an outstanding season in 2006 for the NPB Champion Nippon Ham Fighters, and has parlayed that success into a Major League deal. His role for the Red Sox should be similar to Mike Myers job before he bolted to the hated Yankees. It would be something of a risk to allow Okajima to pitch to Major League right handers, although he is capable of fooling righties as well. To give you an idea about how he stacks up against other prominent relievers to make the move to the US, I'll highlight career numbers for Kaz Sasaki, Akinori Ohtsuka, and Takashi Saito using a few basic pitching ratios.

Okajima
2.31 K/BB
9.44 K/9
1.315 WHIP
3.36 ERA

Kaz Sasaki
3.70 K/BB
12.20 K/9
1.007 WHIP
2.41 ERA

Akinori Ohtsuka
4.05 K/BB
12.17 K/9
1.010 WHIP
2.39 ERA

Takashi Saito
2.98 K/BB
7.63 K/9
1.236 WHIP
3.80 ERA

As you can see, Sasaki and Ohtsuka are two of Japan's absolute finest closing pitchers. How Texas thinks that Eric Gagne is the man to fill the closer's job for them ahead of their Japanese insurance arm is beyond me. Ohtsuka is the real deal. Saito came in last year and surprised for the Dodgers. I think he'll be hard pressed to duplicate his success in 2007, a year older, and a year longer look for hitters. Okajima at least compares favorably to Saito, but is really a tough comparison in terms of his role with the Sox. Saito is a more traditional pitcher, with a little more traditional approach and delivery. Okajima will be a pleasant surprise, and will shore up the lefty specialist role quickly, but we shouldn't expect him to be a candidate to close. He wasn't even able to consistently hold that job in Japan.

Thats' my two cents. I hope someone pays a little more attention to "Okaji" at camp. He and Yuka should be very nice additions to the Nation....

UPDATE: I may have confused readers with the mention of a "low release point" and Mike Myers in the same story. I want to clarify that what I mean by "low release point" is that Okajima tends to hold the ball a bit longer into his motion before releasing, creating a difficult sight line. He is an over the top pitcher. In the following YouTube clip you can see the curve on a number of occasions and I think there are a lot of places to observe the late release that has the ball drop into the dirt. When I watch it I almost think it's a mistake and that he's not going to throw the ball, but when he does it takes a heck of a drop. You'll also see that he can be a nibbler, which is fine if he's getting the calls (he did in the Japan Series), but if the umpire is feeling stingy, he can get himself into some trouble.

You'll also notice at the start of this clip that Okajima enters the game and walks the first batter, a lefty, to put runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. What does Dragons' manager Ochiai, a great player in his own right, do in this situation with a right handed batter at the plate? He bunts the runners over to make it two outs and runners on 2nd and 3rd. Yes, he has the lead, but the next guy in his lineup is a lefty, and we know that lefties hit .186 off of Okajima in 2006. It boggles the mind.

The Gut

2007-02-20T09:32:00.000+09:00

A lot of people have been talking about the extra weight Matsuzaka is carrying around, and many readers of this blog have asked me about it. I'll give you the scoop via a conversation I had with my wife.

We were sitting in front of our tv watching an NHK recap of the Spring Training appearance of Mr. Matsuzaka, and I told her that American people seem shocked at his poor condition reporting to camp. (Not that anyone should be all that shocked when you see the proportions of Curt Schilling in comparison.) The Mrs. quickly pointed out that many Japanese baseball players report to camp out of shape because training camp is a time when everyone returns from their only short vacation of the year, when they let it all hang out, and the purpose of the seriously rigorous training is to get back into shape. This is very true. Major League ballplayers, give or take a few on each team, are generally in much better condition throughout the Winter than their Japanese counterparts. Training is a more year round endeavor, that means for most guys less intense work in Florida or Arizona. The Japanese player will get out of shape and report to what amounts to a boot camp, where every member of the team bonds through painful and strenuous conditioning drills.

My wife went on to say that she thought Matsuzaka was at fault for not understanding the Major League way of practicing at training camp, and that he should have come in better condition, to be ready and also to make a better first impression on the people of Boston and the Red Sox. I agree. I believe every ballplayer should come to camp ready to work on baseball and conditioning should be a very minor part of the training. When you are paid the salaries that these guys make, it's an obligation to take care of yourself better. We haven't really seen this from the big name Japanese players to this point as both Matsui and Ichiro are very committed to working out year round. I seem to remember Kaz Sasaki was a bit lax when he reported every year for the Mariners, and you can see Nomo's later years as evidence of this phenomenon.

For the most part, guys today know this. It's not like the days when Mickey Mantle and company would drink and tan and spend all hours relaxing with their families. Nowadays, athletes in all sports spend time working out. Curt Schilling, especially at his age and in his role as the "ace" of the rotation, should be a better leader in that respect. I hope to see Papelbon, Matsuzaka, and Beckett show up to future camps as the leaders of the Red Sox pitching staff, ready to rock and roll.

I can't believe I'm saying this. As a Yankee fan, I should hope they show up full of chocolate like Uter.

But since I'm a committed Red Sox blogger now, so here's to moderation and self-restraint for pitchers!!! Huzzah.....

Which Media?

2007-02-19T07:27:00.000+09:00

Hello Matsuzaka True-Believers. It seems that Spring Training has begun in earnest and the big boys are out to get ready for the long season ahead. I say big boys because we saw Curt Schilling show up in his full off-season glory, and many fans unfamiliar with Matsuzaka were surprised to see him sporting quite a nice spare tire as well. I can't speak to Schilling, as he generally pitches with a hefty front section, but Daisuke may have been enjoying LA more than he was working out. Nevertheless, I expect you'll see him ramp up his training and get into decent shape by Opening Day. His high school coach told an ESPN reporter that he was mainly concerned about Matsuzaka's conditioning going to the States because he can get lax if someone isn't on his case riding him to stay fit. Keep an eye on it.

This post is mainly about the media issue. It's interesting to me that people are still surprised at the amount of Japanese media that follow these players around. I thought this was common knowledge. A lot of major media outlets are reporting the media throng over and over as if it were an invasion of aliens. Yes, the Japanese media is serious. Yes, they are fanatics about their athletes on the international stage. The interesting irony of all this, to me, is the fact that Japan has no "All Sports" network that covers athletics 24 hours a day like ESPN, for example. Who is more ravenous? Take this screencap from CNNSI.com, for example.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a CNNSI fan. I like many of their writers. Read the caption under Matsuzaka's picture. It says:

Every time Daisuke Matsuzaka so much as stretches at Red Sox spring training camp in Fort Myers, Fla., dozens of Japanese media will be there to capture the moment.

Japanese media will be there to capture the moment? That's an AP photo posted at CNNSI.com! Not only that, but in addition to the photo and caption, Matsuzaka's name appears two more times in the main headline section. One of those lines says, "Matsuzaka arrives at Sox Camp" and has a video link!! I know the Japanese media is fun to play on. It's hilarious to see 50 Japanese men and women with cameras and mics huddled together in a wild pack chasing after an athlete, but let's keep some perspective. This is a lot of fun, isn't it. Wait until he pitches against Boston College and the Marlins...his first scheduled outings. He'll face BC for about 2 innings on March 2nd, the Marlins for a bit longer on the 6th (I believe), and it has been announced that he will debut in the regular season at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City against the Royals on April 5th.

Media Man

2007-02-16T19:39:00.000+09:00

I'm not going to get wrapped up in the walking-breathing press conference that is Daisuke Matsuzaka. He's a true cult of personality, besides being a world class pitcher, and while I find that fascinating, I don't fancy myself much of a tabloid news fan. I don't generally get worked up over "boxers or briefs" to quote that famous Town Hall moment in President Clinton's first campaign circuit for the presidency.

That said, Jason Stark at ESPN.com has done a fine piece on the first major conference of Spring Training that includes a thin but accurate depiction of the frenzy that is Koshien. If all the US media treatments on Daisuke are this well written, we're in store for an interesting season. I won't hold my breath though. I'm mainly looking forward to actual Spring Training games and the first real glimpse at Matsuzaka in full "kaibutsu" mode. (That's "monster", his Japanese nickname.)

Until then, I'll drop a note or two if anything interesting happens, but I'm not all that excited about which flavor Wrigley's he chews, spearmint or juicyfruit. (It's spearmint, by the way....Just kidding.)

It's Just Beer

2007-02-12T10:39:00.000+09:00

I recently posted a Japanese television ad for Asahi Super Dry Beer at Matsuzaka Watch. The Super Dry ad campaigns are very popular in Japan, and it's not unusual for celebrities, athletes, and people from all walks of life to appear in tv ads downing beer. It's just beer. The Japanese do not come from a culture of Judeo-Christian moral values, and as such are not even remotely wary of the "evils of drink". It's just beer.

Apparently, the ads are creating something of a furor with moralists, and those in government protecting their little private kingdoms of regulation. Mind you these ads never air in the US. They air in a foreign country where it is normal to see people drinking beer. After all, it's just beer. For Americans to become so provincial and highly sensitive about this issue is beyond ridiculous to me. Forgive me for being a moralist myself, and I don't intend to sound holier-than-thou about this story, but I have to ask myself, "How is it that a group of people can become so horrified over something they will never see?"

The argument by the moralists is that athletes should not promote the consumption of alcohol, as it will have a bad effect on the children that look up to them. I wonder how this affects American kids who will never see the ads. Yes, maybe they can see them on YouTube, but they can also see provocative music videos, R-rated snippets from NBC television outtakes, and all manner of other bizarre offerings. Are these people worried about the well-being of little Japanese children everywhere? Well, I'd say that's an issue for Japanese parents and the Japanese government to work out. In Japan, there isn't the threat of a vengeful God looming over the people, forcing them to repent and toss aside their wicked ways. In fact, you'll be surprised to hear that this wasn't the case in the United States either until the 1800s. The Puritans arrived on American soil, a people we've come to know as historically famous for self-denial, and this idea f rom Wikipedia illustrated the false perception we have of our national Christian heritage, and the consumption of alcohol:

The English Puritans were temperate partakers of "God's good gifts," including wine and ale.

In fact, the same Wikipedia discussion of alcohol and Christianity tells us that the Pilgrims landed in the New World with an abundance of alcohol and immediately began brewing to uphold their local community rituals and customs. Even the Puritans and the Pilgrims knew that it's just beer. It wasn't until the urbanization movement that was brought about as a result of the Industrial Revolution that we saw moves to ban the use of alcohol to curb public drunkenness and somehow become a solitary beacon of Christian perfection on Earth. We can see the roots of our current moral relativism in this era of social change.

Back to Matsuzaka. Alcohol consumption in Japan is very high. I don't have figures to compare the US and Japan in terms of alcohol consumed, and frankly it's not necessary to get that specific here. There is also a form of legalized gambling in Japan. Sex is also a part of life that is not regarded as particularly "sinful". The Japanese may have the reputation for being a repressed people, but it's a completely false idea. The type of repression that exists in Japan is more a kind of self-regulated behavioral repression tied to maintaining the common peace. If one's behavior is somehow so outrageous as to upset the delicate social balance, they are shamed. Alcohol is not part of this equation. Alcohol is a release from that very rigid code of behavior, and while Japanese are famous for indulging in alcohol to the point of extreme inebriation, it is controlled in a very reasonable and balanced way. For the most part, work and family life are not adversely affected by the consumption of alcohol. Working long, hard hours and staying away from the home is more an issue that drinking.

Children growing up in Japan are not subjected to the sexualization of alcohol on television the way we are in the US. There are no bikini-clad pitch women "cat-fighting" in public and plunging into a public fountain. (I recall that was a controversial ad in the US some years ago.) Japanese beer ads feature hearty consumption of the product, a la Daisuke's commercial, but almost always attach the drinking to healthy social behavior like delicious meals with friends, and such. The attachment of beer consumption to American football broadcasts are just as strong a message that beer and sports are married, as anything we see from Japan. Beer sales at American stadiums are responsible for almost ever major problem in the stands that we see every year, and also play an important role in the riots that we see post-championship celebration. In my opinion, the portrayal of beer consumption in the Japanese ad is not only more honest, but also less attached to subtle cultural messages about sex....if you want to get moralistic about it. I don't because I believe it's just beer.

The last point here is about America growing up. I love my country. I love my country more now that I've been away for several years than I ever realized. I am proud to be American. I am proud to have been born in a country which has been responsible for some of the greatest innovations in social and technological science over the last 200 years. One of our greatest flaws as a people is our cultural myopia. What goes on in other nations, and in other cultures, is part of the fabric of the human experience. It may or may not be good for us as a nation, but it most certainly can't be judged by our own biases and via our particular cultural lens. Baseball is a microcosm of society, and as such is a fascinating case study filled with historical benchmarks on things like integration, dealing with the death of cultural icons like Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson, and the healing of post-September 11th society.

Now, more than ever, we are integrating the sport as a part of the globalization phenomenon of the modern world. Part of that trend is the realization of America that we are but one part of a larger world. Athletes coming to our shores to play, make a living, and participate in our national culture must adjust to the way we do things, but that is not to say that we shouldn't do likewise. As Americans, we are lucky to attract the brightest and best talent from around the world. Our greatest gift to the people of the Earth is our openness to providing opportunity to those with great potential. If we hope to benefit from their genius, we need to be equally open to the opportunity they bring to push our culture to evolve. Part of that evolution is a new openness to accepting and understanding ideas which are different from our own. In this case, Matsuzaka's beer ad adds a new wrinkle to something we've only known from our own narrow perspective. While we may decide that it may not be good for Americans to see ads of this nature, and particularly our children, it is not for us to say that the ads shouldn't run in Japan. It is our unique opportunity, as we get to know this player, to see things from a different perspective and ask questions about our own ideas and beliefs. We may find them reinforced, but we must at least ask the questions. That is the gift of a more international perspective.

But, in the end, it's just beer. That's only my opinion. I may be wrong. If you'd like to judge for yourself, you can head to the Asahi Super Dry webpage and view the ads yourself. Just follow the link and look for the following icon in the middle of the page, on the left.

Click and you'll be able to view both the Matsuzaka ad, and the Matsui version. You'll also note that the tea-totalers are a rather powerful force in baseball, as they've long fielded an entire team of Bugs Bunnies. I believe you can even see the earliest recorded appearance of the gyroball if you follow this link.

New England Japanese

2007-02-11T17:02:00.000+09:00

In all my efforts to bring information about Daisuke Matsuzaka to the American public, I have also endeavored to introduce a captive audience to the real culture of Japan. This is not only true of my work here, but in the entire body of writing I have done regarding the Japanese game and its players. One of the angles that I think is most important to my coverage of Matsuzaka's career in the US is the relationship that a player of his profile has in forging a bridge between nations. It may sound a bit melodramatic, but in many ways it's true. How much do American's really understand about Japan? How much first person experience have you had with Japanese people?

For many, the answers to those questions are "not much" and "none". That's not to say people aren't interested in Japan or Japanese culture. I've always found that, when asked, it's common for most people on the street to show a great deal of interest in all things Japanese. The obstacles, however, are large. Japanese people rarely set roots in the US, preferring to stay temporarily and return to their homeland. The language is a mystery, with its multiple writing systems and a grammatical system nearly the exact opposite of our native English, Spanish, or other Indo-European groups. The overwhelming popularity of Japanese imagery from the Edo period and earlier is also a big reason for people's interest, while also providing ample disconnects from what is actually modern Japanese life. You rarely see anyone wearing a kimono on the street, except maybe in Kyoto, and many of the exotic mental pictures of what Japan is like would quickly wash away if you were to set foot on the other side of immigration at Narita.

It's not to say that things are all the same. Far from it. The difficulty in discussing Japan is the actual diversity that exists among regions. Japan seems like a homogeneous nation, and in some ways it is, but in many other ways people from one side of the country are as different from their countrymen on the other side, as New Yorkers are from Los Angeleans, and Floridians are from Minnesotans. Some things remain firmly rooted in custom and tradition, while others are very modern and adapted directly from foreign nations. Japan is not one thing.

I was contacted this morning by one of the editors at the Boston Globe. The paper has a very interesting piece, written by correspondent Adam Smith, about Daisuke Matsuzaka's adjustment to Boston. It's much less about Matsuzaka than it is about Boston's relationship with Japanese culture. Matsuzaka has been a wonderful excuse to examine this relationship more closely and fish out what is really there. Please read it for yourself. The story and a related audio slide show will appear in the Globe's City Weekly section on Sunday and on Boston.com. It's a very interesting look at the disparity between what's "Japanese" in Boston and what's more broadly "Asian". For many people with little firsthand experience with Japan, it's often difficult to separate the two.

To that end, I've had a wonderful opportunity to become fast friends with the President of the Japan Society of Boston, Peter Grilli. He's an intelligent and engaging man, with a very long standing relationship with Japan and Boston. Perhaps there is no one more qualified to speak on the subject of Japanese-American relations, particularly with respect to New England, than Peter. Throughout our communications, we've shared a lot of ideas, baseball-related and otherwise. I've come to value his experience and his openness to sharing his perspective a great deal. I spoke with him on the telephone this morning, and asked him a few questions about "the meaning of Matsuzaka" to Boston. Peter is quoted several times in the aforementioned Globe article, giving me more food for thought.

Not surprisingly, he talked a lot about his hopes for the future of this international relationship. It's obvious that deepening the Japanese love for New England and for Boston is an important goal in his work. The profile that Matsuzaka brings to the region can only impact the reputation of the area in a positive way. There's so much to see, and so much to fall in love with. It is noteworthy that Peter raised several key points of interest to the Japanese. Cape Cod is a fishing community with authentic American historical and cultural appeal. It's something that reminds the Japanese of their own tie to the sea, but it offers a very special twist to their own experience. Likewise, the legendary Fall foliage of New England is sure to be a fast favorite among the throngs of Japanese tourists that will be spending their first quality time in the region. If Matsuzaka happens to be pitching in the World Series during the time when the leaves are the most beautiful, you can bet that all of Japan will know.

It was obviously important for him to hold back his excitement over this turn of events, as it figures that most Japanese in the Boston area will be tourists or temporary residents, students and the like. The permanent or long term residency of Japanese in New England is not likely to increaae as a result of this windfall of publicity, but it is Peter's hope that those who come will choose to stay longer. Boston will no longer be a one day stop on a longer trip to New York, for example. To that end, in place of the typical museum visits and photos in front of John Harvard's statue in Harvard Square, perhaps more Japanese will dive further into the enchanting New England waters and learn more about the people of the city. Forging relationships of this kind is the way that the Japanese learn more about us, and vice versa. In the end, that's what this blog is about. Yes, the conversation starts with baseball, but it can go much further if we keep an open mind.

For more information about the Japan Society of Boston, their schedule of events, or to find out about how you can enroll in Japanese language courses, please head to their website. Tell them Mike at Matsuzaka Watch sent you. You won't regret it. I guarantee your life will be richer and more rewarding for having participated in their programs.

A Conversation with Will Carroll

2007-02-04T11:32:00.000+09:00

At 10:30pm I sat in my home office, looking over some articles on the web. At any moment, the little green "online" icon was going to appear next to Will Carroll's name on my Skype contacts list, and we'd begin our long overdue conversation on Japanese pitching phenom, Daisuke Matsuzaka. I'd first contacted Will in October, prior to the posting process. We'd exchanged some e-mails and both agreed that a conversation would be a good idea. Unfortunately, that conversation didn't materialize until two days ago. Life intervened, and the mayhem surrounding the posting and negotiations provided enough blogging fodder to keep 10 people busy 24 hours a day. Now, in the calm of the offseason, and in the waxing hours of night in Japan, I waited to bring this conversation to life.

For Will, this "phone call" meant dragging himself to his computer at 8:30am EST. The quiet of the Japan night was simultaneously the coffee-fueled beginning to the American morning. We'd agreed in advance on a few topics of interest, and I'd accepted his gracious offer to be interviewed for Baseball Prospectus Radio, when our talk wrapped. As I stared out the dark second story window of my Japanese home, the call came.

Will Carroll is an excellent writer for the baseball think tank, Baseball Prospectus. He is an astute observer of pitching, among many other things, and brings an advanced understanding of physiology to his work. His specialty is injury analysis, although that niche is far too limiting to capture the scope of his perspective. I've enjoyed his writing for a long time, including his weekly column at BP called "Under the Knife", but my connection to him has developed over a long period of time, from afar, and quite anonymously. You see, for the past few years both of us have been eagerly observing Daisuke Matsuzaka, and writing about him.

To begin our talk, the two of us exchanged a few thoughts on Japanese baseball in general. In the course the ensuing conversation, Will asked me what I thought Matsuzaka would do. It was an interesting question to me because I felt that over the last few years, as I’d been talking to people about my belief that Matsuzaka could be one of the top 10 pitchers in the world, there was really only one other voice out there that was talking about the player, and talking about him in the same terms as I. That was, of course, Will Carroll. After a long-winded and winding response to the question, I eventually got back to that same assessment and was curious about how Will got to know this player on the other side of the ocean. His response was very interesting.

MW: At what point did you first become aware of him?

WC: I became conscious of him through the gyroball. Mostly the whole mythology of the gyroball and his connection to it, and trying to figure out….I’ve been on this “gyroquest” for three years now, and then when Matsuzaka’s name came into it I was like, “Oh! Look at this guy.” Y’know, aside from it, he was just good, and at the Seibu website they actually showed the games. So, I would wake up at, like, three in the freakin’ morning and watch the games on this one inch screen. What can you learn from that? I don’t know, but then at the World Baseball Classic he came out there and Jeff Passan did the article on him and he’s kind of become my little player.

It’s kind of the way you find a band before everybody else has heard of them and you tell all your friends, “Hey, you should listen to this band.” Well, Matsuzaka’s my baseball player, which is really strange because he was good well before that and it’s not only that he’s good and fun to watch but I also have this emotional investment in him that he should be good because I’ve been talking about him for three years and now I need him to be good. If he’d throw the gyroball occasionally that would help me a lot too.

MW: When I started researching him, as I got more interested in him, you were the sole voice that I found repeatedly saying that you thought this guy was one of the top pitchers in the world, and I was glad that my own opinion of him was sort of verified by seeing that. I think that now our interest in him has kind of converged that we’re talking about it now. I think I saw recently you did a piece on YouTube ….

WC: Well, we use YouTube to save the bandwidth cost. (laughs)

MW: Sure. (laughs) You talked about the kind of pitches that you felt he has and scouts say he has some 70 (rated) pitches, and that the slider’s an 80. That’s kind of what I’ve been trying to harp on with people who automatically see a Japanese name and say, “Irabu” as soon as they see it. And, the whole reason behind what I tried to do at the beginning is kind of get people used to the fact that you haven’t seen a top Japanese pitcher come over yet and especially one of this caliber who comes around once in a generation.

WC: Well, yeah, I don’t know if you saw Rob Neyer [say] that we should be looking at Nomo rather than anybody else. And the more I think about it, the more I think Rob’s right. I mean, because Nomo was….I don’t know exactly how good he was if you rank the Japanese pitchers at the time he came over, but he was up there because he had crazy, nasty stuff.

[Editor's Note: To see how Matsuzaka stacks up against guys like Irabu and Nomo, check out my piece on Matsuzaka vs. Japan's Best]

And I know a lot of people got thrown off by Nomo’s little delivery. Matsuzaka has the same sort of…it’s not the same twist, but he’s got that pause at the top, and a lot of people had trouble with Otsuka because he had that three beat delivery. I wonder if anybody’s going to try to mess with Matsuzaka’s delivery. Whether they’ll say that pause in there’s illegal.

MW: You mean in terms of the rules of the game? I’ve wondered that as well.

WC: I don’t think it’ll effect him, but I think Joe Torre’s wondering if it will.

MW: (laughs) Yeah, I’m sure the Yankees will be the first ones to call attention to it.

At this point in the conversation, we paused so Will could grab cup of coffee #2. The idea that Matsuzaka's mechanics, and his style of delivery might be an issue in the Major Leagues is something that has rarely been discussed, but merits a bit of thought as Spring Training approaches. There are a host of questions about the Japanese routine that will come into play over the next few weeks and months, and when the brief break for coffee refill was over, our conversation turned to that very subject.

WC: With Matsuzaka, there’s two things that I haven’t seen anybody talk about with his preparation, and the first is whether he does anything “typically Japanese”, because I know they’re into throwing a lot, which I think is good and there are always the stories about a guy has a bad outing so he goes to throw 300 pitches in the bullpen. Is there anything he does along those lines that they’re almost sure not to let him do here?

MW: Yeah, I was actually going to ask you the same thing because over here he’ll throw 100-pitch bullpen sessions every day before his start, except for the day before, I think. I think last year he threw a pretty heavy bullpen one day before he pitched because he felt he didn’t get a good workout in the day before, which made the news. They’ll throw 100 pitches, in the offseason sometimes they throw 200 pitches, and the crazy thing to me is that not only do they do that every day but between innings they’ll just stand there on the side and play “long toss” or even throw seriously.

WC: Now, when they’re throwing a bullpen, what percentage are they going at?

MW: I would say, probably 60 to 70 percent.

WC: So it’s like throwing warm up pitches?

MW: Yeah, they throw warm up pitches, but I’m sure they put some pop on it at times. But, they throw so many pitches, I don’t think they could go 100 percent the whole bullpen session. I think they go at a pretty good clip though. I wonder if any of these Japanese pitchers have come over to the Majors and have actually been told by their Major League teams, “Your not going to be allowed to do that anymore.”

WC: All of them.

MW: And do you think they listen?

WC: Some. The one that didn’t was Sasaki. He would go to the bullpen and throw 100 pitches just for the hell of it....But, he had a lot of success. Nomo, they didn’t. There’s even been some other guys. Like, Chan Ho Park, when he went to Texas, they would stop letting him do his…it’s not really a “yoga” workout…I’m sure it’s not yoga…but he ended up having hamstring problems, and the hamstring problems led to back problems.

With a new pitching coach in Boston, a guy who was a pitcher, but he really doesn’t have any pitching coach background, I’m very curious whether he’s going to have his own ideas or he’s going to be a blank slate or whether Matsuzaka’s going to be special. Because already Schilling gets to do his own thing, and Beckett is Beckett, so it wouldn’t be hard to say, “Hey. He’s special. He’s just going to do his own thing. Especially given the fact that everybody’s going to be watching him anyway. So, I’m very curious about that, and the other thing I’m curious about that I haven’t been able to find, old stats that aren’t in Japanese characters. Does Matsuzaka have his own catcher? Has he had a guy long term?

MW: Not that I know of. I’m not sure about that. I think they rotate catchers quite a bit actually. I’ll have to go back and look again, but I’m pretty sure the Lions have had a couple of catchers over the last few years and neither one of them has been particularly good with the bat, so I think they’ve kind of rotated them back and forth.

[Editor's Note: I went back and looked at the catching situation for Seibu since 2001. I was able to determine that in 2006, Matsuzaka pitched to light hitting Tooru Hosokawa 21 of his 26 starts, including the post-season. This is not unusual as Hosokawa caught 99 of Seibu's 136 games last year, and 113, 116, and 93 going backwards to 2003. Before Hosokawa was the #1 guy for Seibu, Tsutomo Ito was the catcher for 22 or 23 years.]

Will and I discussed the strong personality of Jason Varitek, and how it might affect a strong-willed guy on the mound, like Matsuzaka. His command of 4 or 5 pitches will be something different for Varitek to handle this season, and it will be interesting to see how the two work together. Both Will and I have thoughts, but we're going to take a wait and see on this situation. So many questions!

One of those questions, central to many American fans' thinking is the abuse that is inflicted upon Japanese pitchers. More than Varitek's catching, the pitch repertoire, or cultural adjustment Matsuzaka's ability in the US to earn his contract, and make the Red Sox look like geniuses, is his ability to dominate AND stay healthy. I ran a piece about midway through the 2006 season about Pitcher Abuse Points, or PAP. If you care to read up on the finer details of that analysis, head over to that story. The gist of it is, pitchers who throw over 100 pitches in a game, increasingly subject themselves to exponentially worse "damage" in 10 pitch increments. In our early e-mail exchanges, Will told me that PAP doesn't work for Japanese pitcher. I had to ask him why...

MW: Something I wanted to ask you, since we began to e-mail back and forth…I did a piece a while back using a PAP chart that I was running on Matsuzaka, just to see how he stacked up, and it’s off the charts compared to even the most abused Major Leaguers….

WC: It doesn’t work.

MW: Yeah, I was wondering what’s your perspective on it? Why doesn’t it work?

WC: A couple things. First off, PAP is based off a five man rotation and even though the Japanese use five man there’s more rest days in there, so it essentially factors out to six days rest, which is something I’m curious about…his adjustment to that…the five days versus six. But, it’s just a different game. It’s not played the same way, and all the assumptions made off PAP were based off, I wanna say, it went back to like 1978.

Japan is actually more equivalent to the 60s, and we’re working on this project where we’re doing this book on pennant races and two of the chapters I’m working on are 1934 and 1967. So I’m looking at all these pitch charts and it was just different. They didn’t throw as hard, but they would throw 150 pitches a game. And, there weren’t as many strikeouts because they were throwing for ground balls. And I think the Japanese have been kind of the same way. They are a little more strikeout happy so I think that they’re throwing harder, especially from the games I’ve seen. But even so, the strikeout totals, and the strikeout rates equate more to a game of the late 60s or early 70s than the PAP era, so I just don’t think the math works.

MW: It’s hard, because from what I’ve read about PAP, there were some differing opinions as to whether the 6 man rotation is a factor in lessening the impact or whether it a matter of how many times he’s thrown more than 130, 40, 50, 60 pitches in a game.

WC: I think the fact is, and we’ve learned this all along, PAP is a proxy for fatigue. And, it’s a pretty good one. I mean, it stands up statistically, but it’s still a proxy and it’s far from perfect. I’ve been involved in a study, where we’re trying to use heart rate to predict how fatigued someone’s getting and it’s interesting but we’re really really early at this stage. We can’t figure out how to take someone’s pulse on the mound without getting really intrusive which teams obviously won’t allow. So, I think we’re still at a proxy for fatigue.

We’re looking more at how much more does the extra day of rest affect their fatigue. Does the differing conditioning regimen affect their fatigue? Does just a different mindset affect them, and so I just don’t think PAP works, perfectly. There’s probably an adjustment in there.

MW: It’s been one of the more puzzling things that to look at because one of the cultural factors that exists here is that in whatever profession you take up, whatever activity you engage in, it’s sort of a forgone conclusion that you’re going to finish what you start. And there’s a certain element of pride. It’s sort of the Japanese equivalent of macho. You’re expected to finish what you start, so you see these guys with…. I think Matsuzaka had 14 complete games last year, and that’s not unusual. The thing that puzzles me about it is, there are closers on these teams but they don’t use them when there ace is on the mound, and they let these guys throw…I mean, they’ve scaled Matsuzaka back the last couple of years but he still throws on occasion 150 pitches, 160 maybe, and regularly tops 125-130, so I’m wondering, I’ve read some of the things you’ve written in terms of pitch counts, is there a reasonable ceiling that we can say is madness to go over?

WC: No. You’ve caught me at a really bad time because I’m working on an article about why pitch counts are hurting pitchers. (laughter) No, I think again, we’re using pitch counts as…y’know, PAP is a proxy for fatigue, and pitch counts is a really bad but simple proxy for fatigue, it’s more a fact of, are we taking pitchers who could throw 150 pitches, if done reasonably and technically well, and a lot of other things, and not letting them get over-tired. I think it’s pitching tired, where you’re either overexerting or your mechanics break down because of muscular fatigue that you get into a situation.

I mean, we saw what happened to Pedro Martinez when he altered his mechanics, and he altered his mechanics because he was hurt and started this feedback loop. I think it’s a fact that if they’re in condition to do it, and they do it safely, we don’t know what the extra day of rest does, and one of the things I’ve been advocating for years is a four-man rotation, but you would throw less pitches. You would get him out of there right at 100. You would have not quite the fatigue to get out of, theoretically, but then you have a guy like Matsuzaka who can throw 150 pitches, and you have a guy like Maddux, who right about 80, he starts thinking he’s done. So, I think there should be a place for both of those. You should be able to say, “This is my pitcher and today he is really good for “x” number of pitches and then at some point he’s “less than” and my reliever is “better than”. I don’t think the pitch count itself, in the absence of any other information, tells us a whole lot.

MW: I wanted to ask you while we were talking about pitch counts for a second, because I tend to follow what you’re saying about the differences in situation and physiology and so forth, that make it difficult to put a number on it and there is something insane which happens over here that…..I’ve seen that you wrote in something I read a little while back that a high school pitcher threw 144 pitches….

WC: 166.

MW: …and what you see here, actually, is a little bit more frightening than that even. There’s a kid, I don’t know if you’ve heard his name, Yuki Saito, and he was the big star…. What we saw him do this year in the High School Tournament was typical of what you see a lot of these high school kids do during the tournament. Over a 14 day period he threw 931 pitches, and in back to back days he threw 300 pitches in less than 24 hours.

WC: Well, I mean, that’s very Matsuzaka-like from…what was it ’98?

MW: Yeah, ’98.

WC: Um…Yeah, and again, you’ve got the fact that high school pitchers tend not to have quite the same control, that they throw a lot more pitches just to begin with. The kid that threw the 166 was over 7 innings....Yeah…y’know…..was he effective? Did his mechanics change? Was he still getting people out? We see a lot of it. It’s not as well documented because, y’know, high school baseball over here is nothing, and getting moreso. In college we see that a lot. Like [Tim] Lincecum, the kid with the crazy arm action. He would regularly start on Friday, relieve on Sunday. And he would go out and throw 120 and 130, I think he had one 140 pitch outing, and then come back and throw 20 on Sunday. If you did that with….pick a Major League pitcher….people would scream and holler. I’m not sure it’s bad.

MW: It seems insane to me but at the same time the kid didn’t look like he was laboring, and was still popping the gun in the low-90s after 14 days of pitching and and back to back days of over 100 pitches, he was still popping the gun at the end of the game when he won.

WC: Yeah, and if his mechanics were solid, and if he wasn’t fatigued, and…Earl Weaver always said, “The hitter will tell me when he’s tired.” I think there’s so much truth to that. If I had the energy I had when I was 18, I would be exploding or something. But, I think it’s the same way. These kids can do things at 18, that maybe they can’t at even 22, 23, 24. I still think I’d rather err on the side of caution, but the fact is that some of these kids can, and one of the things that bugs me about pitch counts and the standardization of them, is that we have guys out there who can probably safely throw 140-150 pitches an outing. We have no idea who they are because we have no development system to get them up to that number....So, I think we’re probably leaving pitches on the table with some people, but the worst part is we don’t know.

I always say, “If you look at Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux, you wouldn’t think they’re the same species, let alone the same occupation. And, they don’t do anything the same, but yet they get very very similar results. And, Randy can probably go out there for 120 pitches and outing and not even blink. Y’know, his back would act up, but….he’s crazy anyway. Where Greg will go out there and at 75 he starts whining. It’s too hot. My hands are sweating. He starts kvetching about everything. Which is good? Which is better? They both get good results. If you get Greg out at 90 pitches, you’re having a good day. If you get Randy out at 90 pitches, he’s going to shoot somebody.

Having a conversation with someone like Will Carroll brings out these great gems. The conversation we were having started at Matsuzaka and wound itself into a very interesting take on the issue of pitch counts in general. His explanation brings an entirely different context in which to examine the Japanese pitching phenomenon. If pitch counts are truly as poor an indicator of a pitcher's threshold as Will states, and PAP is a system unable to account for much of the Japanese routine, how does anyone know, short of an MRI, whether a Japanese pitcher has been abused without seeing his entire body of work. The answer may be, it's impossible. If Will's analysis is correct, every pitcher has a different ceiling and a different breaking point. Only when we see him visibly fatigue, and his mechanics break down, can we know for sure that he's had it. Bringing the conversation back to Matsuzaka specifically, I asked about what happens with the focus on pitch counts in the Majors, and how it will affect Matsuzaka.

MW: Yeah. It should be interesting to me. He’ll go back into the dugout, sit down, and he won’t say a word, but I’ve got to wonder what he’s going to think about his Major League experience as soon as they start yanking him at 110 pitches or whatever.

WC: ....I imagine Farrell’s talked to him. I imagine Boras has explained to him, “Forget the complete game. You’ll get one.” (laughter.) But, is he going to adjust his game to where he’s more efficient? Is he going to try to complete games? There’s obviously places for it, who was it? Mulder did one on 90 pitches a couple of years ago, and Halladay did the 99 pitch, 10-inning complete. Could he become that kind of pitcher? Yeah, absolutely. And, I’m curious to see what kind of adjustment he makes on that.

MW: There was a game this year that he threw a complete game….it wasn’t actually a complete game, but he pitched a 3 hitter over 7 innings on 70 pitches and didn’t walk a batter, struck out 9.

[Editor's Note: What I found when I went back to check this game, was that Matsuzaka was not 100% during this outing and was forced to pitch out of the stretch for virtually the entire game!!]

He’s definitely got it in him. He likes to try things. And I think that gets him into higher pitch counts. But I wonder if he’ll stop trying things, and he’ll just go with the stuff that works and he’ll stop playing around with pitch four and pitch five.

WC: I completely agree. I think that goes back to, is Varitek gonna call the game? Varitek’s not a nibbler. That was the problem that Varitek had with Beckett, was that Beckett always wants to nibble and Varitek would call for the ball and so Beckett would just say, “Screw you. Here comes 100 miles an hour, and usually it went out at about 120 miles an hour. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of factors that go into….how’s he going to deal with the catcher? How’s he going to deal with not being able to complete games? Is not being able to complete games going to adjust his pitching style? Is his pitching style going to lead to more complete games? It’s this big circle. And, there’s so many factors that we don’t know. How is Francona going to deal with it? How is Varitek going to deal with it? How is a brand new pitching coach going to deal with it? How’s the media going to deal with it?

More questions. There will be a lot of scrutiny early in the season. Matsuzaka will have two countries watching him and evaluating his performance. If he does well, it may pave the way for a new understanding of Japanese pitching. If he falters, it will be another nail in the coffin for the reputation of Nippon Pro Yakyu. Will and I spent some time discussing this, as I alluded to earlier in this piece. Both of us agreed that Kei Igawa would be the real make or break pitcher for the next wave of guys hoping to sign contracts from Japan. If Igawa is even league average, it bodes well. If not, it may be tough for the other top players to make a big money deal. The last series of questions I had for this conversation were centered around the gyroball. Will Carroll is the United States' #1 advocate for the pitch and has done more to bring it into the forefront in the US than any other person. He continues to speak about the pitch, teach it, and I wondered where on Earth he first heard of this unusual pitch.

MW: ...it’s kind of what makes him the story of the offseason in the Major Leagues. You’ve got this guy who’s a legend over here and he’s a big mystery over there with the gyroball and everything following him around. I’m sure you’ve been asked about it a million times. I’m curious where you learned the gyroball the first time. Where did you hear about it?

WC: Rob Neyer was doing a chat on ESPN and somebody asked him about it, and unfortunately when I finally thought to go back and look at the chat, they don’t have it archived. So, I’d love to know who asked him. He was doing his pitcher book at that point and, so, somebody asked him about the gyroball. He’d never heard of it. Sent out an e-mail to five or six people, of which I was one. And, being the obsessive compulsive that I am, I was like, “Well let’s look this thing up.” And, I found a website about knuckleballs, of all things, where they were talking about this pitch. I was like, “Well, what is this thing?”

At the time, I had a friend who was over in Japan. He was over there. He’s a securities analyst and happened to be over there. So I call him up and I asked, “Hey, have you ever heard of this book?”, and he goes, “No, I’ve never heard of this book. Why would I have heard of this book?” And, I go, “Well, could you go to a bookstore and see if they’ve got it?” He goes, “Hey, I just walked by the world’s largest bookstore over here in whatever section of Tokyo he was in.” And, I’m like, “Yeah, go get it”, and it was there. And, so, he bought it for me and he comes back. It takes me like a month to get him to remember to send it to me, and “boom” here it is. And, so I’ve got this book in Japanese and I can’t read a damn word of Japanese, but there’s lots of pictures. Have you seen the book?

MW: Yeah, I’ve seen the book and I have a bunch of the Power Points and a lot of the stuff they used in doing the research. Somebody sent it to me a while back.

WC: Oh, awesome. Going through it, it took me a year to get anything out of it. Every once in a while, I’d pick it up and look at it and initially I wrote an article for Rob about it and completely screwed it up, and everybody keeps referencing it and I keep telling Rob he needs to either take it down or let me fix it. (laughs) Because I confused the gyroball with the shuuto.

MW: I know the article you’re talking about.

[Editor's Note: I've linked to that article in the right margin since I started this blog. I didn't have the heart to tell him during our conversation, but it's still an interesting read, if for nothing than to follow the history of the conversation of this pitch in the US.]

WC: Yeah, and it’s embarrassing at this stage. But, it turns out it wasn’t horribly wrong because the gyroball does go down and in if you throw the true gyroball. But after a year of looking at the book I finally figured out one of them, and should technically be like the slider one. Then, one day working with a couple of pitchers I go, “Hey, you wanna try something?” And, one of the high school pitchers threw it and it broke like two feet, and I was like, “Holy crap! What is that?”

MW: Was that Joe Niezer?

WC: Yeah. And, it was just like, “Wow! What is that?”

MW: I saw the video of that and it looks pretty crazy.

WC: It was sick, and unfortunately he thought it was a gimmick and didn’t want to throw it and now he doesn’t even talk to anybody about it. I’ve got a high school kid in Jersey who throws a better one. I mean, he threw this thing and inside a half an hour, he was not only throwing it with that nasty break, he was controlling it. And we had the coach from Rutgers out there. ESPN was shooting a bunch of stuff. They’ve got a big article coming…I want to say February 15th….It’s one of their E-Ticket articles, like 10,000 words on it. Yeah, Montefusco. His breaks like nothing I’ve seen. It’s evil.

MW: I’d like to see that.

WC: Yeah. We’ve got some video. Of all the gyroball articles, this is the one I’m actually excited about. Most of them make me sound like I’ve seen the Loch Ness Monster.

MW: (laughs) That’s what’s funny to me. When I read about it, it reminds me of….I read recently that there are four different styles of gyroball, with different grips and things, and I didn’t know that, actually….and it reminds me of when I was a college student. We had a basement lounge in our dorm, and my buddy and I used to play whiffle ball down there. There was no wind, so we could do all kinds of crazy things and I had to laugh when I read it, that it reminds me of doing whiffle ball grips.

WC: It is. It is. But it’s such a fine adjustment to the grip, but it’s how you adjust your wrist at release and it’s so fine that I’m not sure that anybody can control it. One of the things we were having trouble with, especially with Joey, is that if you threw the pitch 20 times, one time it would go the opposite direction, and break just as hard. And, we were sitting there going, “Well, why does it do this? How could this possibly be?” And, it never occurred to us that by adjusting the position of the wrist and the axis of rotation that it would reverse....Two of the things I’ve been doing are….A, the pitch exists, and B, I can teach it to somebody in 10 minutes. So, I mean, it’s been fairly easy.

MW: Sounds like you’ve got the Holy Grail.

WC: No. No. I’ve got an interesting pitch. That’s the thing. Everybody keeps going, “This is the pitch that’s going to change baseball.” And I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

MW: It’s another breaking pitch.

WC: (laughter) It’s a good breaking ball. Yeah, that’s very nice to have, but it’s not going to change the game.

MW: That’s how people treat it though. It’s like it’s the first new pitch in 40 years, and yeah, it’s cool and it may save some guys some arm trouble, but it’s not like it’s doing Bugs Bunny things and spinning around…..

WC: No. No. Everybody wants it to be…it break twice….no, no, it breaks once.(laughter) The was one guy, who asked, “How much does it break?” I was like, “Well we have to aim it a little behind the batter.” He (wrote)was like, “It comes from behind the batter!” I’m like, “No! That’s not what I said at all!” (laughter) It’s crazy.

So, there you have it. Our conversation wrapped up and I sat up for a while to think about all the information that Will had kindly shared. I'm sure he went for coffee #3 after we finished our talk, and I still feel very grateful that we were able to bridge the gap between East and West via our internet conversation. Will and I are kindred spirits in many ways, I believe, but particularly in our feelings about Daisuke Matsuzaka. This is a pitcher that brings with him more than skill and determination. He brings a presence, the mystery of a new pitch, and the hopes of an entire nation.

For more about the gyroball, and for the wisdom of Will Carrol, please check out his regular work at Baseball Prospectus, including the excellent new feature, BP Radio. I will be appearing in a BP Radio segment with Will in the next few days, speaking about Japanese baseball and Matsuzaka. I hope to revisit this conversation with him when some of our questions are finally answered during the season, and I will bring it to you here at Matsuzaka Watch as soon as it happens.

Mmmmm...Beer

2007-02-02T13:41:00.000+09:00

Stay tuned this weekend for a new piece at Matsuzaka Watch. I was fortunate to spend some time talking to Baseball Prospectus' pitching and injury guru, Will Carroll, last night and I asked him a good deal about our friend Mr. Matsuzaka. In the meantime, to hold you over, I'm presenting via the magic of YouTube the Asahi Super Dry Beer commercial in which Daisuke debuts his Red Sox uniform. Good stuff.....

One Japanese cultural note...a bit of trivia.....The Japanese are not so hung up on the consumption of alcohol on television, so you will notice that Matsuzaka freely chugs the frosty brew to indicate his satisfaction with the taste and distinct character of Asahi Super Dry. This is common practice in Japanese beer ads, where seasonal foods and power drinking celebrities replace the American tradition of bikini clad women and over the top humor. Come back this weekend for Will Carroll on Daisuke Matsuzaka and his take on the gyroball.

The Countdown to Launch

2007-01-29T23:19:00.000+09:00

Hello Matsuzaka Watch true believers. I've been very lax about posting since Matsuzaka signed his Major League deal, mainly because there has been little real news, but also for the busy task of caring for my newborn son.

The countdown to Spring Training begins, and I'm ready to get back into full court press mode at Matsuzaka Watch. The offseason is far too long, and the dull days of a baseball-less winter are finally fading into history. You'll notice that I gave the blog a facelift recently with the Green Monster banner, and some additional Red Sox related links in the right hand margin. There will be more on the way as we get closer to the season, including a "projected next start" marker that will help the casual fan keep tabs on the rotation and each Daisuke appearance. I also reopened the comments section. Without the competing fandoms swirling around the posting process, I think the commentary should be a lot more interesting. Go to it.

In the meantime, I'm working on a couple of big pieces to kick things off for the debut of our young hero. Without letting the cat out of the bag too much, I'm trying to put the final pieces together on an interview with a well known pitching expert to talk about the type of things we should expect from Daisuke's new MLB routine, and how it departs from his overloaded Japan background. I'm also working on some writing about the gyroball. It seems that CNNSI (among others) have beaten me to the punch as the season approaches. There is a very nice piece by "Sake Drenched Postcards" own Brett Bull cross-posted for your enjoyment. I've been mulling over the gyroball piece for some months now. I have the power point presentations and video clips from the team responsible for hypothesizing the pitch, and it's very interesting. Matsuzaka is featured prominently in the report, although how exactly he participated is a bit cloudy.

Dr. Himeno and his team work on the motions required to generate a gyroball by observing the "human swing technique" involved in generating torque during a golf swing. I'll get into more details on a rainy day, but suffice it to say these guys are serious.

I'll also be examining the Red Sox rotation a bit, and discussing some of the pitching rotation issues that may emerge under a number of different scenarios. I'm happy to announce the creation of a mailbag feature that I'll be running fairly often. Send your questions and comments by clicking the link at the top of the sidebar. Get ready for a boatload of Matsuzaka related commentary. The season is about to begin.....

Cover Boy

2007-01-10T18:05:00.000+09:00

The offseason in Japan is at times even slower than the winter in the United States. Where you have 24 hour sports networks pondering the comings and goings of free agents and new faces throughout the network of Major and Minor League teams in the United States, most baseball intrigue in Japan is reserved for a few players receiving their salary raises (or cuts) based on their past season's performances. Not much for the die hard fan to sink their teeth into, to say the least.

This year I've been watching the popular season recap programs featuring the World Baseball Classic, the classic two day final of the 88th Koshien Summer Baseball Tournament, the championship earned by the Nippon Ham Fighters, and finally the bevy of posting moves that have delivered home grown heroes into the hands of American League East rivals. There is really very little of interest on those programs, as celebrities from the world of comedy, music, television dramas, and sports gather to make jokes, nod in approval after the presentation of each majestic highlight reel, and generally summarize the happenings of the year passing into the pages of history. It's a bit like a Jerry Lewis telethon, hosted by ESPN.

Fortunately, there are always the glossy baseball magazines to the rescue. All year long, several publications produce beautifully laid-out tributes to the world of professional baseball. It should be no surprise to anyone that the recent editions of these periodicals would feature Matsuzaka in heavy rotation. Nothing sells better than Daisuke Matsuzaka when it comes to baseball in Japan in the year 2007. It remains to be seen whether Matsuzaka's persona will be able to wrest the throne of Japan's favorite son from Ichiro over the long haul, but for the moment the spotlight is fixed squarely on the kid from Yokohama.

One of the popular magazines delivering Japanese fans the Major League beat is "Slugger" magazine. The February 2007 edition is also the 2007 Season Preview. I am a notorious "season preview edition" addict, and I'm quite certain that I've helped keep The Sporting News in the business of print for several decades now. This preview contains a lot of very nice write ups about the new crop of Japanese Major Leaguers, including a short piece on the Yankees' Kei Igawa and a translated Tyler Kepner piece on the fans of Red Sox Nation. Kepner's story is a short look at Curt Schilling's impressions of the fandom that follows the Sox, and leaves the reader with a sense that New Yorkers are near the pinnacle of knowledge and passion about their club, but Red Sox faithful take it to another level. The name of the story is a play on words using chinese characters. It reads "The Powerful (fanatic) Baseball Town Waiting for The Monster (Daisuke)."

There are other Red Sox related pieces in this special issue. You'll find a funny piece about Manny Being Manny, where the Japanese writer notes that while speculation surrounding a Manny Ramirez move has died down, his desire to go elsewhere and his oddball behavior leave the door open to a 2007 lineup without him. There is also a short survey style interview with Kevin Youkilis that talks about the passionate booing and cheering that Red Sox players must endure, even as rookies. If you note in the photo corresponding to the Youkilis piece, on the right hand side you get a glimpse of an MLB merchandise ad featuring a Carlton Fisk "Stay Fair" statuette and some apparel. "Be the first kid on the block to get a Carlton Fisk figurine! Amaze your friends!! Whoever among them even knows who Carlton Fisk is......"

The other publication I picked up was the aforementioned Official MLB Magazine - Japan Edition. The Matsuzaka story here is more of a chronicle of how Daisuke arrived at the doorstep of a Major League career. It also talks a bit about the American media reaction to his posting and subsequent negotiation. There are also lengthy features about Igawa and Iwamura, among others. Both magazines talk a bit about Scott Boras and his power, as well as Ryan Howard and his swing. There are also full length features on Chien Min Wang in both magazines, of which the "Slugger" feature gets the best position, directly following Matsuzaka. It's called "Asian Ace in Bronx", showcasing the important Asian influence the Majors are enjoying from the Far East in the new millennium. Those seem to be popular topics in Japan after a Fall of major media coverage on both fronts.

To wrap things up here today, I'll report the inception of Matsuzaka advertising on the level that has only been seen with Hideki Matsui and Ichiro to this point. It's apparent that the Sox have purchased a reputation on the grand scale in Japan. Everytime Matsuzaka is on television the Red Sox logo is with him. The only thing left to do for Theo is get an everyday player to increase the everyday exposure of the Red Sox brand in Japan. That's something for another day....

GyroBaby

2007-01-03T19:56:00.000+09:00

It's been some time since I posted here at Matsuzaka Watch, but I assure you it's not for lack of interest. I've had my hands full with some very happy and important business.

On New Years Day my wife and I were blessed with the arrival of our first child, a son. There are no words to describe this experience, but indeed I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

Hiroto (HEE-roh-toh) Plugh (Ploo) is 7 pounds, 5 ounces and 20 inches long, born at 7:42am on the first day of 2007, year of the boar. His wingspan is absolutely ridiculous. He's all arms and legs like his daddy was, way back when.

My wife is a lefty so I'm hoping the free agent market for pitchers hasn't dried up by the time his rookie contract is up sometimes around 2036. At any rate, his lullaby has been "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" since he was conceived and he heard it for the first time on the 1st, as a member of the air-breathing world. He smiled.

Play ball Hiroto!!

Welcome to America

2006-12-15T17:32:00.000+09:00

Matsuzaka is official. Red Sox Nation rejoice!!

For those of you that have been coming to Matsuzaka Watch for a long time, and for those just checking in, I'd like to share my feelings with you about the addition of Daisuke to the Red Sox roster for the forseeable future. I'm not going to get into my feelings about his performance. You can read about how highly I think of him in my various pieces of writing here. I want to write about some feelings I have as a person.

I'm a Yankees fan. For some people in Red Sox Nation, that means there's a license to go around the internet trolling and generally casting dispersions about my mental health, personal character, and intellect. So be it. I live in Japan and I love the respect that people have for one another, that seems to be sadly absent from US culture at the moment. I'm a big boy, and I can take it. On the other hand, there are a lot of intelligent, well-mannered, and decent fans in Red Sox Nation that have exchanged ideas and thoughts on Japanese baseball, Matsuzaka, and the Yanks/Sox rivalry. I enjoy those conversations. Thank you for raising the rivalry out of the gutter for a minute.

As a Yankee fan, and an absolute Daisuke fanatic, I've walked a very tough road personally over this turn of events. I think it's great that American fans will get to see the real top flight talent that exists among the Japanese pitching ranks, and maybe put to rest the Irabu comparisons for good. I also think it's a wonderful thing that the bridge between two cultures that understand so very little about one another will be extended to another American city. I hope people in New England will learn something about Japan. What you think you know about this mysterious country is probably not 100% accurate. I'd like to continue to bring you some pieces of writing about Japan via Baseball Japan, my comprehensive blog on the whole of the game over here. I will be working more and more on content over there, and I hope you drop by.

As much as I wish it was Brian Cashman putting a Yankee hat on Daisuke, I was extremely proud as an American to observe the first class treatment that the Red Sox organization has given to Matsuzaka. If anyone from the organization happens to read this blog, I want to thank you personally as an American living abroad in Japan. I work very hard to be a good ambassador to my country every day I'm here, and the work you've done to make Matsuzaka feel welcome hasn't been lost on the Japanese people. The smile on Daisuke's face told a million stories, and I think you've probably won a lot of fans through your show of courtesy.

I'm in the difficult position of wanting Matsuzaka to win every start he makes, but not at the expense of the Yankees winning the division. That won't win me any fans here, but I promise to keep writing as objectively as I can. I am too big a fan of this player to let any team allegiance spoil it for me. I've spent too many hours and days working on this blog to piss it all away on pettiness. If you will accept me as a mouthpiece for the great chronicle of Daisuke Matsuzaka in America, I promise that I will never treat the Red Sox with disrespect here, and I will always do my best to present as unbiased an account of things as is humanly possible. I believe in that very much.

Last word today. Please extend Daisuke the courtesy of a little wiggle room should he struggle to start the season. For all I know, he'll come out guns blazing, but there is a very real cultural adjustment between the East and the West, and the transition between Japan and the US, and vice versa, is a trying and confusing one. We are the same in some fundamental ways, but in most respects we are almost opposites culturally. Thanks for reading. Go Daisuke!! Give 'em hell.

On the Cheap

2006-12-14T04:44:00.000+09:00

Well, it's finally over. Matsuzaka and the Red Sox have come to an agreement on a 6 year, $52 million deal that could reach $60 million with some bonus milestones. All in all, I think Theo Epstein got an absolute bargain, and should be celebrated by Red Sox Nation.

Including the posting fee, the Sox will be paying an annual expenditure of $17 million for Matsuzaka, which is beyond reasonable in the current climate of spending. In my opinion, it shows one thing. Boras had zero leverage in the end, and ran one of the great smoke and mirrors campaigns of all time in these proceedings. With Matsuzaka having said goodbye to Japan, and no free agency even possible for 2 years, he played the brash, greedy Gordon Gekko, but looks a bit more like Kenneth Lay in the end.

For Theo's part, he and Lucchino looked liked bumbling imbeciles at times, and I had t wonder how far over their heads they were in the negotiations. As this has now played out, I think they deserve a tickertape parade in Boston. They get a 26 year old pitcher, who by most estimation is one of the top 5 to 10 pitchers in the world. They lock him up at Meche money on the payroll to a long term deal, and outplay Boras in the process.

As a Yankees fan, I'm not looking forward to facing the Sox when Daisuke's on the mound these next 6 years. It hasn't been easy for me to watch this unfold, as I've devoted a year of my life to promoting this player to the American public only to see him land with my arch rival and a reasonable price. It's admittedly a tough pill to swallow, but as a fan of this player, I am delighted that he will have a chance to show the world what he can do. I wish him the best of luck, and look forward to attending a few games at Fenway with my Matsuzaka Seibu jersey on my back. (It sure as hell will be easier than the times I've been in attendance with a Matsui jersey and Yankees hat.)

I'll be back with more as it unfolds in the coming days, weeks, and years.....

Boras relieved? Matsuzaka to Take Offer?

2006-12-13T21:58:00.000+09:00

UPDATE: This from Rotoworld (for what that's worth).

"The Boston Herald reports that the Red Sox's latest offer to Daisuke Matsuzaka is for six years and a total of $48 million, while Matsuzaka is asking for $66 million over six years."

Asahi Television's evening news was just reporting on the big story, and had a man on the street in LA covering the wee morning beat on the Matsuzaka front. The LA reporter indicated that the Red Sox had in fact increased their offer, Boras seemed relieved, and the decision was now up to Matsuzaka about what he wants to do.

If all of that is true, and I read the tone of the report correctly, they believe that Daisuke is going to take the money. That said, I think no one knows. It's still all speculation.

Just thought I'd report that from Japan.

Olney's Lament

2006-12-13T10:31:00.000+09:00

UPDATE: Bob Ryan writes an article today, echoing the sentiments I've been writing here throughout the posting and "negotiating." Give it a read. I think he's 100% dead on correct.

I'm sorry, but this is the biggest horse manure I've ever heard in my life. (As quoted by Boston Dirt Dogs).

"And you'd have to wonder: For Scott Boras, when does this stop becoming a chase of dollars and start being about his clients' doing what they love in their work and playing baseball?...

"Boras is extraordinary at what he does, at extracting a volume of dollars from places that you never would've imagined. He is like a chess master, and every negotiation is a match to be won. But in this era, when players are now making more money than they can ever spend in their lifetimes, it's debatable whether the extra cash actually improves the quality of life of his players, and whether all this angst pays off, in the big picture." -- 12.12.06, Buster Olney, ESPN

First of all, for Scott Boras, his job is to get as much money as is humanly possible for his clients. That's the whole reason they hire him, rather than asking Joe Average agent to represent them. To cry about it now shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation. Everyone, including Theo Epstein, knew that they would pay top market dollar for Matsuzaka WELL IN ADVANCE OF THE BIDDING. The Red Sox can be pissed off that Boras and Matsuzaka are being greedy, but they shouldn't cry because they are shocked or surprised. I have sympathy for the former, but none for the latter.

Regarding the second part of Olney's comment, cry me a river. If CNNSI was waiting to pay him double for his services, but he had to sit out a year to cash in, are you sincerely going to sit there and tell me that the money is good enough at ESPN? Bullshit. Yes, he will be a super rich man, whatever contract he signs, but it's not about how much you can spend in your lifetime. It's about how much you are worth in the market, and how much that will buy your children and grandchildren. I never see the point in those holier-than-thou types who say wealthy athletes should settle for less because they can't spend all the fortune they make in one lifetime. If I had a chance to set up my children, grandchildren, and every subsequent generation beyond, I would.

They may come to terms on a deal, but make no mistake, these are not children playing for the love of the game. That's only part of the equation. Any experienced journalist should remember the cliche, "If everyone else were playing for free, I would too. But they're not." That is one of the fundamental, 10 Commandments, of modern sports. We all play by those rules, and you either pay, or walk away empty handed. It may be ugly, and we have the right to complain about it, but let's not be naive. That's all I ask.

Face Off

2006-12-12T18:38:00.000+09:00

It's down to about 2 days now. The Red Sox, Boras, and Matsuzaka will be meeting face to face to hammer out whatever they can at the 11th hour. It seems as though the Red Sox are going to sweeten the pot, but Boras is proclaiming that Matsuzaka should be paid $100 million over 5 or 6 years, regardless of the posting fee. Epstein is standing by his posting fee, plus salary, calculations for his budget.

The meeting that is being arranged between the interested parties may or may not ever materialize. If Boras and Matsuzaka are working together, and are adamant about their numbers, there will be no deal. I can't see Epstein paying Matsuzaka between $15 and $20 million on top of the posting fee.

I think I know what the thinking is here. I believe Boras knows that the Mets, Yankees, probably the Rangers, and just maybe the Cubs would have paid the $18 million a season (or someting close) on top of the posting fees they threw out there. He knows that given the chance again, he could get those teams to pay $100 million over 6 years, plus the posting fee. If Matsuzaka goes back to Japan for the 2007 season, he could earn 4 or 5 million for the year. If the Sox offer is $12-$14 million and the other teams will pay him $18, he loses nothing in the end.

The x-factor is Boras' ability to get Daisuke HUGE money from Nike, or any of the other heavyweight advertisers that he has relationships with. If he dangles insane endorsement money in front of Matsuzaka, he'll play along. If you remember when Shaq was drafted, he held out for the money he wanted by promising to live off the money he was receiving from Pepsi and Reebok.

It's about the money, and the willingness of other clubs to pay the higher salary. If Boras knows that money is out there, from a pure business standpoint, it makes sense to play hardball in this way. It's disappointing, greedy, and a bit unsportsmanlike, but it is a business and we're reminded of that every time a big time athlete takes the money. The last thing you need to know today is that The Japan Times has confirmed that Matsuzaka WILL NOT be a free agent after 2007 due to the half season he missed as a result of injury in 2002. He has to wait until 2008 to be a free agent.

More when it goes down.

Countdown to Armageddon

2006-12-11T15:08:00.000+09:00

As I write this, word has been out for a couple of days that talks between Boras and the Red Sox have completely broken down. The Boston Herald reported this, citing an inside source close to the negotiations, and the rest of the media has been running with it. It’s hard to say where the two sides are at this point. All that had been reported in the press about numbers was $7-8 million a season from Boston versus $15 million a season from Boras. Let’s look at it again for a moment, and decide what it means.

If the Red Sox offered $7-8 million, and are not budging, they are to blame should things fail to come together. $7-8 million a season doesn’t buy you anything remotely close to a good pitcher in the current market, when Adam Eaton is getting a multi-year deal worth $8 million per season. I doubt that this is the case, however. I suspect the Sox are willing to pay more than $10 million and have made that move with Boras already.

If Boras has an offer on the table for $12 million or more per season, and he’s not budging, he’s the villain. All parties involved in these negotiations have to realize that the posting money is a hard, cold reality when budgeting a player into a team’s payroll, and the agent should be willing to work with the team to get value within reason. I think Arn Tellem is likely working this way with Kei Igawa and the Yankees.

The possibility exists that Boras is trying to single-handedly break the posting system altogether, and he may be using Matsuzaka to do so. If this is the case, it’s unfair to everyone involved. Yes, the posting system needs to be changed. The problem is, I think there is a plan to radically change it in the follow year, regardless of the Matsuzaka situation. A lot has been made of the reputations in this little game, should this scenario prove true. Matsuzaka’s reputation with the Japanese fans. The Red Sox reputation with Japanese owners and advertisers. Boras’ reputation with everyone.

My take on this is that Boras has the least to lose, so he may be willing to throw himself into the fire and try to blow the whole thing up. If he looks like a bad guy, well, he is. People see him as a bad guy anyway. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Matsuzaka will return to Japan, and probably come with his tail between his legs. He doesn’t want to pitch in Japan anymore, and he’s already said his goodbyes. The thing is, if the Red Sox are offering less than $12 million, he can likely recoup that money later. If Seibu pays him $6 million a year next season and opens the posting again, they will get their money and someone will pay Matsuzaka the $15+ million he wants. That’s $21 million over two years, where the Red Sox may only pay him $20. The numbers may differ a bit, but I think the point is valid.

The Red Sox will look bad if they low-balled him when comparing his value to the present market. No one told them to bid $13 million more than the Mets. No one will feel sorry for the Red Sox if they try to get a 26-year-old ace on the cheap after throwing a giant posting fee at Seibu. On the other hand, if the Sox are negotiating in good faith and have a fair offer of more than $12 million on the table, Matsuzaka needs to speak up and say, “Yo, Boras. I’ll take it, okay.” Otherwise, the Red Sox are the victims in this situation.
What do I believe? I believe that the Sox have an offer on the table that is close to fair. I believe that Boras wants $15 million and is not budging. In the end, as I’ve said before, I think the two sides will come together on less years at money somewhere between their current standoff. The Sox will give him up to free agency early, and in exchange Boras will come down slightly off his number.

The clock is ticking………

All's Quiet on the Daisuke Front

2006-12-05T19:48:00.000+09:00

I haven't posted here in a while. I've been anxiously awaiting any kind of substantative news on the Boras/Epstein negotiations, but it's been very quiet on both sides of the ocean. What we've heard is a lot of speculation, both from optimistic Red Sox fans, and bitter Yankees fans, hoping the whole thing is a bad dream. I was one of those Yankee fans at the beginning, but I really feel comfortable with Matsuzaka in Fenway. It should be an interesting season with him in the AL East.

The only thing I have to offer here at this point, until something happens that's real, rather than imagined, is a bit of perspective on the money we may be looking at. Think about these recent signings and where Matsuzaka sits in context.

1. Roy Oswalt (5 years, $73 million)
2. Chris Carpenter (5 years, $65 million)
3. Vincente Padilla (3 years, $34 million)
4. Gil Meche/Ted Lilly (asking 4 years, $40 million)
5. Adam Eaton (3 years, $24.5 million)

The rumors have been swirling that Boras is seeking 6 years and $12 million per season for Matsuzaka. That would seem to jive with this market. Boras is steadfast in his pitch that Matsuzaka is one of the top pitchers in the world, and should be paid as such. If established aces like Oswalt and Carpenter are getting $13-15 million per year, Matsuzaka should come in just below. Likewise, Vincente Padilla who is essentially an NL pitcher with a career ERA of 4.06, ERA+ of 106, and WHIP at 1.346 is getting $11+ million per. Will Boras allow Vincente Padilla to get more money than Daisuke? Fat chance. It stands to reason as well that he will be paid significantly more than Lilly and Meche, not to mention Adam Eaton. Those guys have no business in the same conversation as Matsuzaka.

What the Red Sox now face is the prospect of paying the posting fee and the contract, plus luxury tax factors, to the tune of 6 years and about $25 million per year. Ouch. I'm of the belief that he's going to earn as much of that money as anyone can be expected to earn, but that's a tough pill to swallow. It makes you wonder if Johan Santana is going to get $30 million a year in 2008, doesn't it. (Don't bother answering that, it's a rhetorical question.)

More when it comes in, Matsuzaka Maniacs.

Negotiations

2006-11-27T20:11:00.001+09:00

It should be no surprise that the Red Sox and Scott Boras are having a tough time coming together on a contract for the services of Daisuke Matsuzaka, at least in the early going. The Sox put up a tremendous bid to acquire exclusive negotiating rights, and are looking to offset their cost by starting at the low end of the contractual spectrum. I can't blame them.

Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald reports that the Red Sox are seeking to lock up Matsuzaka for something in the neighborhood of $7-8 million a season, probably over the standard 6 year period that Japan and the MLB people have negotiated into the posting system. The overall value of a Matsuzaka contract at 6 years and $7 million would come to roughly $15.5 million a season, when factoring in the posting fee. That's a very nice deal if the Sox can pull it off. You'd have to take your hat off to Theo Epstein if he can work that magic. It seems next to impossible by all accounts though, as Boras has other things he's working on.

Take for example, Barry Zito. With the astronomical contracts that have been shelled out to Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Lee, and the equally exorbitant fees being shelled out for guys league average and below, it stands to reason that Boras wants Zito to be the biggest cash cow of the crop. He's a young left handed starter with a Cy Young on his resume. He's signing his last contract in his prime. The rest of the league will fall in line with Zito's money, and the other Boras clients will surely look to Zito's deal as a symbol of the super agent's power to get them a similar price when it's their turn.

Take into account the fact that Ted Lilly is looking for $9 million a season, and you have the market for Matsuzaka. If Lilly is a $9 million a year pitcher, and Zito expects to cash in a 5 years and $75 million, you find Matsuzaka in between somewhere. If the Sox hope to bring Daisuke to Boston, they need to start at $12 million a season.

The other sticking point that the Red Sox and Boras have met is the aforementioned 6 year player rights. Boras knows that Matsuzaka's best chance at cashing in big for a second time is to get him a contract before he turns 30. That means a 3 year deal. For the Red Sox, it would mean paying out $87 million over 3 years for a pitcher that might bolt for greener pastures in the not too distant future. $29 million a season out of pocket is not chump change. Who wants to spend big on dinner and then go home alone?

If I had to put on my magic hat and make a prognostication, I'd bet that the lowball offer that the Red Sox are throwing out there will grow, in exchange for more years. I'm guessing that both parties will settle on something in the neighborhood of $48 million over 4 years. That would mean an out of pocket expense of $99 million over 4 seasons, which comes to just under $25 million annually. Wow! God bless you Daisuke Matsuzaka. I do think it will get done though.