I’ll be the first to admit, after Daisuke Matsuzaka’s 2007 season I was somewhat unimpressed with his numbers. Sure, he did manage to win 15 games but with a line-up as stacked as the ‘07 Red Sox had, I am sure even Red Donahue, who lost 35 games in 1897 (link) would have looked like the second coming of Walter Johnson.
By the beginning of the 2008 season I was ready to start calling “Dice-K” Hideki Irabu 2.0 and then out of the blue, the 27-year old Japanese pitcher became the next Roger Clemens for Boston, sans the love affair with teen country singers and the penchant for throwing broken baseball bats at guys with handlebar mustaches.
This season, Dice-K won 18 games and lowered his ERA from 4.40 in ‘07 to an impressive 2.90 this season. Those numbers, mixed in with Josh Beckett’s troubles versus the Los Angeles Angels, has earned Dice-K the starting spot versus the Tampa Bay Rays in game 1 of the American League Championship Series.
As far as those unwarranted comparisons to the “Fat Toad”, Hideki Irabu… in just two seasons played, Dice-K is one win behind Irabu’s career total of 34, which took him six seasons to reach. I’d say this will be the very last time anyone calls this pitcher a bust again.
This will be the first playoff series I am going to be watching. As a Tim Wakefield fan, my heart is invested in Boston but I don’t know how they are going to silence the bat of Evan Longoria and company!
I don’t think anyone was calling Dice-K a bust. He had a nice year but he throws too many pitches and he’s been walking too many guys. I’m glad that the Rays are facing him in Game 1 and not Lester. I’d be surprised if Dice-K can last til the 6th inning.
I am a huge Red Sox fan and I have to say that I am still really disappointed in Dice K. He throws way to many pitches, he nibbles until he ends up walking the bases loaded then he bares down. He has pitched to some like 12 batters with the bases loaded without giving up a run but what good is that stat if he is the one that loaded the bases in the first place. I think that next year he will be much better if he pitches like he pitches in pressure situations all the time, by throwing the ball over the plate.
18-3 2.90 ERA… and you are disappointed? So he gets into jams, as long as he can get out of them, that doesn’t really mean much. And he can almost certainly handle throwing more pitches than virtually anyone in the US that wasn’t around till the last decade+, considering his workload in Japan was more like the guys from prior to the mid-’90s, several of whom are still pitching LATE into their careers, and still looking good-to-great doing so.
The thing is lonestar he doesn’t throw more pitches instead of lasting until the seventh he comes out in the fifth. He taxes our bullpen. And sure its good he gets out of those jams but in the playoffs the last thing you want is the bases loaded every single inning he’s not going to squirm out of it everytime.