Daisuke Matsuzaka: Stud

In his last 4 starts, Daisuke Matsuzaka has allowed one run or less. In the two starts before those, he gave up less than 2 runs each game. In the last month he's thrown 42 Innings, with an impressive 51 strikeouts, and a WHIP at an even 1.

Matsuzaka is falling into exactly the type of groove that the Sox front office had hoped he would. Now that he is getting a healthy amount of run support, his stellar outings are worth a bit more. With a healthy AL East lead in hand, Matsuzaka's dominance gives the Sox the benefit of allowing Schilling as much time as he needs to get healthy.

After 2 outstanding 8-inning efforts in a row, Daisuke will be matched up against Tigers young gun Nate Robertson on Sunday.

Annnnnd There's The Outing We Were Looking For

Only the 4th matchup of two Japanese-born pitchers in the MLB, Tomo Ohka and Daisuke Matsuzaka faced off at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Daisuke was on fire, giving up only one run, and scattering 5 hits and 3 walks over 7 innings. His control was ON, and he never fell too far into the one-inning ruts we've seen him fall into in recent history.

Lots of rumors seemed to be flying around about why he looked so solid on the mound this time around:
1. He took his side session the day before his start, not the usual middle day
2. He changed his conditioning regimen
3. He threw over 100 warmup pitches... in addition to starting sprints 6 hours before the game, and across the outfield long-toss.

The only one that seems to have been confirmed is number 3... it seems like Daisuke just needs to push himself to the limit to perform better. This might not be the healthiest routine for an entire season, though.

Living Up To The Hype

108 Pitches, 74 Strikes, 7 innings, 6 Hits, 1 Walk, 1 Run, 10 Strikeouts. Daisuke Matsuzaka's Red Sox debut was very impressing. Only running into trouble at two points in the game, Daisuke seemed in control throughout the game.

What was most impressive about Matsuzaka's debut was the movement on his pitches. The KC hitters were whiffing pretty hard, and usually nowhere near where the ball ended up. As the Bill Simmons noted, it looked like Daisuke was throwing a whiffle ball on a windy day. While there was no gyroball per-se, there were a number of lively breaking pitches.

Picture from Boston Herald.