OPINION

By Sean Deveney

updated 12:59 p.m. ET March 26, 2008

Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona proved to be a sage. His starting pitcher on Tuesday, Daisuke Matsuzaka, was preparing for what might be the most bizarre opening day start in the history of baseball, a Japanese national hero pitching at the Tokyo Dome — site of some of the heroics that made Matsuzaka’s reputation in the first place — in an official major-league game being played as most teams still are toiling in Arizona and Florida.

The outing against the Oakland A’s would be anything but a normal start, and Matsuzaka could not be expected to treat it as such. He’d be nervous, he’d be tempted to overthrow, he’d be pleading to throw all nine innings, no matter how he felt.

In his meeting with reporters, Francona said, “Striking the balance is some of our challenge. There’s no doubt it’s opening day, he’s pitching in the country where he grew up, he’s going to have a little bit more adrenaline. ... We’ll certainly keep an idea of amount of innings, pitch count, while recognizing hit counts. We don’t want to do something to damage August and September and hopefully beyond that.”

And so, after five innings and 95 pitches, after registering an outing that was as strange in its substance as it was in its surroundings, Matsuzaka’s night (which was morning here in the U.S.) was finished. He allowed just two runs and two hits and seemed to be in a groove nifty enough to persuade Francona to allow him to pitch the sixth. He retired seven in a row, three on strikeouts. But, no, Francona had to strike a balance, and the balance dictated that 95 pitches were enough.

The Red Sox would go on to beat the A’s, 6-5 in 10 innings, but Matsuzaka did not figure in the decision.

In all, this wasn’t the Matsuzaka that Red Sox fans—the ones in the upper right hand corner of this country, as well as those scattered throughout the islands of Japan—had hoped to see.

As a rookie last year, Matsuzaka was brilliant through early July, when an eight-inning win against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays pushed his record to 10-5 and lowered his ERA to 3.53. Around mid-August, though, Matsuzaka appeared to be gassed, going through a 1-4 stretch, pitching 26 1/3 innings over five starts, yielding 28 runs, six home runs and 14 walks.

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He finished last season with a 15-12 record and 4.40 ERA. The home runs—he gave up 25 on the year—seemed to rattle him, causing him to nibble too much with his pitches. That led to walks, exacerbating his problems.

So, when the second batter of the 2008 season, Oakland’s Mark Ellis, clubbed a home run deep into the stands in left-center field, there had to be some concern. This looked familiar. When Matsuzaka walked the next batter, Daric Barton, on five pitches and then hit cleanup man Jack Cust on the foot with a bounced 2-2 pitch, the concern ratcheted up. Another walk, to Emil Brown, was cause for hair-pulling.

Fortunately for Matsuzaka, these A’s are not as patient as their organizational philosophy dictates they should be—despite all Matsuzaka’s wildness, Bobby Crosby swung at two pitches outside the strike zone (knocking in a run on a ground out), and third baseman Jack Hannahan struck out on what should have been ball four. The A’s bailed Matsuzaka out.

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The second inning was not great for Matsuzaka, either. He loaded the bases on a single and two walks but slipped out of the inning with no runs allowed. Still, after two innings, Matsuzaka clearly was overthrowing, putting too many balls in the dirt and making things too easy on the A’s. Matsuzaka threw 60 pitches in the first two innings. He walked four and hit a batter, fell behind just about everyone and went to full counts against five of the 13 batters he faced.

The numbers certainly looked like they belonged to the Matsuzaka who struggled at the end of last year. But Red Sox fans should take heart. When Matsuzaka had trouble last year, he usually was trying to be too fine—in an effort to avoid giving up home runs, barely missing the strike zone. In the first two innings against the A’s on Tuesday, that was not the case. He was just plain wild. He bounced pitches and was 6, 8 inches off the plate to the side. When he missed high, he was at the hitters’ chins.

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In an odd way, that’s better than barely missing. Being outright wild is not Matsuzaka’s problem, and the explanation was nerves, plain and simple. Given the circumstances, that’s understandable and not a source of long-term concern.

Matsuzaka settled down, starting in the third inning, when he retired three of four hitters. He cruised through the fourth on eight pitches and then got through the fifth on 12 pitches, notching two strikeouts. That was the Matsuzaka fans in both countries had hoped to see.

But the pitch-count damage had been done in the first two innings, so that was all the Matsuzaka we were to see on this day. He had been hoping to go deep into the game, but his early wildness doomed that prospect. The final analysis on Matsuzaka’s outing is inconclusive but goes something like this ...

The line: Five innings, two hits, two runs, five walks, six strikeouts.

The circumstances: Absolutely bizarre.

What this means for the ‘08 season: Nothing. He never will pitch so strange a game again in his career, let alone this season.

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