Shockingly enough, unless you lived in Japan, today’s Red Sox exhibition game versus the Florida Marlins wasn’t on television here. And if your fortunate enough to have MLB Game Day Audio, you were able to listen to the game like I did today. I’ll be honest, I only listened to the innings that Dice-K pitched.

He had a relatively easy first inning today. He threw 15 pitches, 11 of which were strikes. He retired former Red Sox prospect, Hanley “Don’t Call Me Manny” Ramirez, on a ground out to the mound. Dan Uggla hit a curveball for single, then he got Jeremy Hermida to pop out to short, and then he struck out Jason Stokes on a 3-2 curveball.

His second inning of work today was a little more difficult. He started out the inning with a walk to Joe Borchard, then struck out Miguel Olivo. The next batter, former New Haven Raven John Gall, hit a ground rule double. Odds are that Borchard would have scored had the ball not bounced out of the park. Dice-K pitched well while he was in this jam, striking out Scott Seabol and then he got Eric Reed to pop out on a bunt attempt.

His third and final inning of work was a relatively easily one. Ramirez lined out to Matsuzaka then Uggla and Hermida popped out to the mound. All in all, a good day for Dice-K. He threw 31 strikes on 47 pitches.

For me, it was nice to see him be able to work out of jams this early in spring training. A lot of pitchers would have just tried to get there work in but not Dice-K. Being in the jam allowed him to pitch out of the stretch at times.

Dice-K spoke with the media after the game and had this to say about how prepared he thinks he is at this point of spring training:

”My readiness for the season is difficult to judge from the outside,” Matsuzaka said through an interpreter. ”I’m probably 40 to 50 percent there.”

TechnoratiTechnorati: ,