No Japan trip for Beckett, Dice-K will start opener

It’s official: Josh Beckett will not be making the season opening trip to Japan.

Said Terry Francona:

Beckett threw off the mound yesterday for the first time since injuring his back, and by all accounts the exercise was a success.

Dice-K Matsuzaka, whose wife gave birth to a baby boy on Saturday, now has clearance to travel to Japan and will pitch in the opener vs. the Athletics.

Lester will start game 2.

It should be a pretty special day for Matsuzaka, as he’ll be throwing in front of his countrymen for the first time since defecting to the Major Leagues last year. 

Dice-Kid arrives, Matsuzaka looks clear for Japan trip

Dice-K’s baby was born this morning, likely clearing the way for him to accompany the team to Japan next week.

Hopefully the healthy birth of his baby marks the end of the bad luck plague that has swept through the Red Sox pitching staff over the last month.

Baldelli out indefinitely

Rocco Baldelli addressed his lingering medical problems for the first time today.

Baldelli will start the season on the DL, where he will remain indefinitely. The Rays have said that they will not pick up his 2009 option on April 1st, but may re-sign him at a later date. But for now, there’s certainly a hole to fill.

Personally, I’m hoping the Rays sign Kenny Lofton to roam the outfield. I have two good reasons for this:

1. I’m terrified of the Rays this year, and everybody knows Lofton teams don’t win the World Series. It might as well be in the Bible. Or at least a constitutional amendment.

2. As a division opponent, Dice-K would get a ton of opportunities to drill Lofton in the shins for dragging ass to the batters box in game 3 of the ALCS.

Inching towards the panic button

If you had asked me one month ago to name the strongest component of the 2008 Red Sox, I wouldn’t have given it a second’s thought. The rotation, you idiot. We’s gots teh Buchholz and we’s gots teh Lester, we don’t need no stinking Santana!

Contrast that winter optimism to today, where if you asked me what the team’s strong point was, I’d say, “we have a strong point?”

Before you rush to any judgments on my character, let me clarify by saying that I pride myself in being a rational baseball fan 95% of the time. I rarely get caught up in media hype, I hate Tim McCarver, and I never panic during a losing skid (unless that losing skid comes in the first or last week of the season, or during the playoffs). So I do know that I’m being irrational right now, which in many ways is worse than not knowing it.

I feel like Edward Norton when he’s going to fight club for the first time. He knows that he’s about to do something that will cause him a tremendous amount of pain, but can’t stop himself so he just does it anyway. That’s me right now.

Let me give you an example of how messed up I am about this:

Last night I actually caught myself thinking, “I really hope Colon has a great outing this week because we need him.”

The logical part of my brain is telling me that it’s too early to be in panic mode. It’s telling me that spring training performance isn’t much of an indicator of anything, that we see more pitchers per 9 innings than we do in an All-Star game. But damnit, the regular season starts in two short weeks, our rotation is not looking good, and it’s never too early to be worried.

For the sake of making myself crazy(er), let’s go over what’s happened to our rotation since the start of spring training:

1. We learned that Schilling may never pitch again.

2. Lester, Buchholz and Matsuzaka look like they’re fighting for the final spot on the Boston College team the Red Sox pummeled last week.

3. Beckett hurt his back (Francona did say today that the injury is muscular in nature, which is good, but does nothing to extinguish my fears).

The lone bright spot at the moment is Tim Wakefield.

Now, I love Wake as much as anybody else, but when the best thing you can say about the present state of your rotation is that your 41-year-old knuckleballer is looking pretty solid in spring training, that isn’t exactly the highest level of flattery that you can bestow.

We’re going to be fine. Seriously. Beckett will be back within the week, Lester and Buchholz will get it together, and Dice-K will get his head on straight once the baby comes.

I want to believe.

Dice-Kid won’t keep Matsuzaka away from season opener

Barring any complications, the Red Sox expect Matsuzaka to be in Japan for the season opener vs. Oakland.

Dice-K’s wife, Tomoyo, is in the very late stages of one of the most heavily publicized Boston pregnancies of all time, falling just behind those of Bridget Moynahan and Hester Prynne.

The baby is due on March 19th, and at this point it seems unlikely that Matsuzaka will be in attendance for the exhibition games on March 21st and 23rd. He is planning to travel separately, and should be with the club when they open the season vs. the Athletics on March 25th. 

Okajima develops a new pitch

Okajima has developed a two seam fastball to compliment his splitter, but he won’t know if it’s good enough to use “until he gets in games and he’s able to throw that against hitters.”

The pitch should be a nice addition to what is already an impressive arsenal for a relief pitcher. His repertoire will now include the two seamer, four seamer, curve, slider, changeup, and splitter. It will be interesting to see how he incorporates his new pitch into his strategy.

Okajima has made other adjustments to pitching in the Major Leagues. After breaking down in September of 2007, he plans to throw less pitches between outings, hoping that he can “peak at the end of the season.”

Hopefully Matsuzaka will take a similar approach.

Dice-K meets Achilles?

The Boston Museum of Fine Art’s shoe exhibit entitled Walk This Way is running (sorry) through March 23. The exhibit takes a look at shoes as a status symbol throughout history, and for the sake of cultural relevancy, includes a pair of Dice-K Matsuzaka’s cleats.

His cleats are paired with a Greek vase depicting runners, “the explanation being that Greek athletes didn’t wear shoes but today’s modern athletes possess extremely specialized footwear.”

Valentine’s Day heads up:

Taking your significant other to this shoe exhibit should score some bonus points, and with the cleats on display you can possibly justify the trip to your buddies. 

Beckett and Dice-K could start first four games of 2008 season for Red Sox

It’s never too early to start speculating, so let’s take a look at the Red Sox’ schedule for the beginning of the 2008 season and play a game of “guess the rotation.”

3/25 – Opening Day @Oakland (Japan)
3/26 - @ Oakland (Japan)
3/27 – off
3/28 - exhibition game
3/29 - exhibition game
3/30 - exhibition game
3/31 - off
4/1 - @Oakland
4/2 - @Oakland

With the way the schedule works out, Beckett and Dice-K could pitch the first four regular season games with six days off between starts.

Here’s the proposed rotation, and I expect the Sox will roll with this if everyone is healthy and present:

3/25 – Beckett
3/26 - Dice-K
3/27 – off
3/28 - Schilling
3/29 - Wakefield
3/30 - Lester
3/31 - off
4/1 - Beckett (6 days rest)
4/2 - Dice-K ( 6 days rest)
4/3 – off
4/4 – Schilling (6 days rest)

Of course, there’s the possibility that Dice-K won’t make it to Japan if his baby hasn’t been born yet. If that happens, then the rotation would probably look something like this:

3/25 – Beckett
3/26 - Schilling
3/27 – off
3/28 - Wakefield
3/29 - Lester
3/30 – Buchholz (it would be a great exhibition start for him, even if he starts in AAA)
3/31 - off
4/1 - Beckett (6 days rest)
4/2 – Dice-K
4/3 – off
4/4 – Schilling (8 days rest)

It’s also possible that the Red Sox would leave their 3-5 starters at home for the trip to Japan and start AAA guys in the exhibition games, but I don’t think the club will decide to do this. With the shortened Spring Training schedule, I think they’ll throw their top guys out there for the extra start before the season begins.

Despite my initial pessimism about starting the season in Japan, this trip could end up being beneficial to the Sox.

It sure won’t feel like Opening Day on March 25th, though.

Analyzing Dice-K’s rookie year: What does it mean for 2008?

Of all the questions surrounding Dice-K Matsuzaka’s second half struggles, there is one that carries the greatest implications for his long-term success: Were opposing batters starting to figure him out at the end of the season, or was he just fatigued?

To start things off, let’s take a look at his stats broken down by half.

Matsuzaka’s stats slipped in every major category in the second half. His WHIP went up 17 points, he allowed 7 more homeruns in 8 less innings, and saw his ERA shoot up more than a point.

He also tended to be less effective as the games went on, holding opponents to a .220 batting average in the first three innings, and allowing a .275 average in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings (opponents batted .315 against him in the 6th inning).

There were eight games in which Matsuzaka gave up 3 or more runs in a single inning, and four games where he gave up 5 or more runs in an inning (a total of 38 runs in less than 8 innings). Five of the eight three run innings came in the 4th inning or later. Seven of the eight came in the 3rd inning or later (he gave up 5 in the first on May 3rd).

To put it simply, Dice-K pitched well the first time through the order, but he struggled the second and third times.

Matsuzaka always established his fastball the first time through the lineup, occasionally throwing it upwards of 70% of the time. The second and third times through the lineup he relied more on his breaking pitches, throwing the fastball between 40-50% of the time.

Here are his stats by inning.

It’s interesting that Matsuzaka’s ineffectiveness in later innings coincided with his reliance on breaking balls.

Here are his pitch selection totals according to Josh Kalk:

Now let’s take a look at the effectiveness of those pitches. You can find this data here.

The biggest problem I see is with his slider. He throws it over 37% of the time, and it’s the pitch he goes to when he needs a strike in the middle innings.

But Dice-K only threw his slider for a strike 60% of the time, and batters only swung at 37% of them.

To give some perspective here, Felix Hernandez takes an approach similar to Dice-K’s, in that he establishes his fastball in the early innings and then mixes in his breaking stuff in subsequent innings.

The primary difference between the two pitchers is that Felix was much more successful with locating his slider. 65% of his sliders were thrown for strikes, and batters swung at them 45% of the time.

When Matsuzaka can’t get his slider across the plate, hitters are able to sit on the fastball or take an easy walk.

Over the first 16 games of the season Matsuzaka showed solid control, averaging one walk every 2.95 innings.

But in the second half, he walked a batter every 2.23 innings—a huge increase of 1.86 batters walked per 9 innings.

When a pitcher is tired there is a tendency to overthrow breaking pitches, reducing the break and making it harder to hit their spots. There is no doubt that Dice-K was fatigued as the season wore on, as his workload was pretty intense for a guy used to pitching one game a week. He actually led the majors in pitcher abuse in 2007.

I don't believe that there was an injury involved, given his pretty consistent release points. There is ~1 foot of variance, not enough to suggest an injury (thanks again to Josh Kalk).

Matsuzaka pitched a total of 3,487 pitches over 32 starts (compared to Beckett’s 3,100 pitches in 30 starts).

He threw over 100 pitches in a game 26 times, over 115 pitches 9 times, and 120 or more six times, with his highest pitch count of the season at 130 on June 5th.

The decline in command can be seen pretty clearly given these numbers:

Like most pitchers, getting ahead in the count is incredibly important for Matsuzaka.

When he threw a first pitch strike, the opposition batted only .204, with a .254 OBP.

But when he threw a first pitch ball, the opposition creamed him with a .280 BA and a .407 OBP.

Further, after getting ahead in the count, Dice-K had a 2.32 ERA. After falling behind in the count, he had 6.71 ERA.

Many analysts have pointed to overuse of his fastball for his second half decline, but he only overused his fastball because he couldn’t throw strikes with his slider.

If he conditions himself well this offseason and if management is more aggressive with monitoring his pitch counts, I think we can expect Dice-K to have an excellent season in 2008.