After a busy morning of personal errands, we’re a little bit behind here today. I had thoughts of skipping this post all together but the sucktastic outing from Daisuke Matsuzaka last night makes it a little hard to do.
The enigma that is Dice-K took the mound last night and as has been the case you never know which Dice-K will show up. He was coming off a brilliant 7 2/3 innings of no-hit ball against the NL East-leading Philadelphia Phillies and was looking to build upon that success against the bottom-feeding Kansas City Royals.
But when you look at Matsuzaka’s line for last night, you’ll know he was far from good with eight walks. He had serious command issues and had trouble with his release point but the telling part to me was that he said he was dealing with “lower body soreness” from that start against the Phillies.
Now I had thought that if anything was troubling Dice-K, he was supposed to communicate that to the staff. Instead, it doesn’t look like he said anything at all and tried to pitch through it last night.
“I don’t think that’s the most important issue,” Matsuzaka said of his lower body issue. “It might have looked like I got out of those innings OK but in my mind, I still felt there were still adjustments I needed to make. It’s been a long time since my body didn’t cooperate like this. I had to rely a lot on my upper body. My velocity was there but there was no movement or bite to my pitches, not to mention any command.”
Manager Terry Francona, pitching coach John Farrell and catcher Jason Varitek didn’t think to seem it was a physical thing but man with Dice-K, you just never know anymore.
In my opinion, the time has come for the Red Sox to cut their losses with him. He’s been nothing but a big problem for the Red Sox. He shows how good he can be in one start but reverts back to his same old crappy self in the next start. The Red Sox need consistency from their starting pitchers and have yet to see it from him since the 2008 season when he went 18-3.
Sure the Red Sox have made a big investment in him and they can’t just send him to the minor leagues due to a provision in his contract, so what do they do from here? They owe him too much money to flat out release him. I really don’t know what else to say other than it’s just frustrating to watch him pitch.
For more slices of Boston Red Sox goodness, head over to the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, ESPN Boston, NESN, Providence Journal and WEEI websites.
And if you must check out the enemy papers, head over to the Kansas City Star and the Topeka Capital-Journal websites.
