Kamado Report: Daisuke Matsuzaka

February 12, 11:48 PMAsian-American Sports ExaminerMichael Street

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Will Dice-K rebound in 2009?
(AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Pitchers and catchers report this weekend, making today a great today to talk about the Big Daddy of Japanese Pitchers in America: Daisuke "Dice-K" Matsuzaka.

He's the $100M Dollar Man, the guy Boston paid $50M to negotiate with, then $50M more to sign him to a six-year deal.

He's the guy that made it OK for the Yankees to sign Kei Igawa to a five-year, $20M deal. The guy who started the post-Hideo-Nomo avalanche of Japanese pitchers you've heard about here.

The guy who gave Junichi Tazawa a place to sign.

For all this, one question remains: How good is he? Or, more accurately, how good will he be next year?

The answer, most commentators agree, is not as good as he has been.

Superficially, Dice-K's numbers improved last year. He went from a 15-12, 4.40 ERA record in 2007 to a 18-3, 2.90 ERA in 2008.

But that just shows how meaningless wins and ERA are. Dice-K regressed in almost every supporting category in 2008, most particularly walks and strikeouts, and that's not a good thing for a pitcher. He went from 8.8 Ks/9 to 8.3, from 2.5 K/BB to 1.6, from 3.5 BB/9 to 5.0 BB/9.

For the non-statheads out there, those last two numbers put him below league standards for pitchers—not awful numbers, but not good ones either.

About the only places he held steady was in WHIP (Walks+Hits per Inning Pitched), which remained dead even at 1.324, and HR/9, which dropped from 1.1 to 0.6.

Now, he did have shoulder problems that put him on the shelf for a few weeks, and he came back stronger. But the numbers he put up after that were the only ones that kept his periperhal numbers in even adequate range.

What does this mean for 2009? He's probably not going to be better than last year, probably worse, and possibly a lot worse. I'm not talking a complete breakdown, but don't be surprised to see Dice-K putting up some ugly numbers at times.

As I've said before, one of the pitfalls of Japanese pitchers is the fact that they don't age well (except for Hideo Nomo, who only spent four years in Japan, to Dice-K's seven). Japanese pitching staffs are smaller, so that pitchers sometimes pitch out of the bullpen on off-days. Their pitchers aren't held to strict pitch counts, and J-ball is infamous for punishing, samurai-style workout regimens that don't always bode well for a pitcher's future.

Dice-K has 1400 innings of Japanese baseball on his arm already, and another 271 of American ball. That's not deadly, but that's not great, either.

The good news? Well, there are plenty of intangibles.

It's reassuring to see that his homers are down and his WHIP is steady. Maybe last year was just a slight regression, and he'll rebound to 2006 levels.

Maybe the shoulder injury was holding him back. Dice-K cut back on the punishing workouts last year, including throwing in between starts, so that might cut back on any further wear and tear.

Maybe teaching Junichi Tazawa will help him get a grip back on his game (assuming his problems are mental).

He's still got four different pitches he can throw, and his tough mental makeup helped him put up such great secondary numbers last year, in spite of declining peripherals. Maybe he can do so again.

He's starting his tenth year in the game, but he's still only 28 years old, so he's close to entering the wily veteran stage. That's when pitchers start to learn how to get guys out even without overwhelming them. Maybe he makes the adjustment from power pitcher to finesse pitcher.

That's a lot of maybes, but baseball's a game of maybes and intangibles, which is why predicting the game is so amazingly hard to do.

Me, I'm going to be rooting for Matsuzaka to turn it around next year, to show that the Red Sox were right to spend a small fortune to bring him over, paving the way for so many others, to prove that Japanese baseball—and Japanese baseball players—can be every bit as good as their American counterparts.

If anyone can do it, Dice-K can.