Fire Brand of the American League

MLB Headlines

MVN - A Boston Red Sox blog | Analyzing the Olde Towne Team since 2003

Matsuzaka wins despite walking too many

By Shawn Medeiros | May 5th, 2008

E-mail | Print | Share

Mike Lowell was a triple shy of the cycle and Daisuke Matsuzaka earned his fifth win of the season only throwing for 5 innings. Dice-K threw 109 pitches en route to walking eight in the ball game, but only allowed one earned run on two hits. Even though Matsuzaka walked eight somehow the Sox starter and the rest of the team managed to get out of plenty of jams in this one.

Lowell hit his first homerun of the season off of Jeremy Bonderman in the second inning which gave Boston an early 2-0 lead.

Jonathan Papelbon earned his 10th save of the season on 13 pitches and no strikeouts.

Star of the Game: Welcome back Mike Lowell

A 3-5 night where in which Lowell knocked his first homerun, and was a triple shy of the cycle he also drove in two RBI’s on the homerun.

Preview of Next Game: Tigers need to pound home runs to win

Let’s be honest here. The Tigers really do not have any pitching besides Justin Verlander and he has been so-so this season so the Sox need to pitch effectively and let their offense do their job. These Tigers will not win games unless they score 7-10 runs a night. Just my opinion.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Justin Verlander, Boston Red Sox / Shawn Medeiros, Jeremy Bonderman, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Mike Lowell, Jonathan Papelbon, Detroit Tigers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Matsuzaka wins despite walking too many”

Brian Filipiak says:

May 6th, 2008 at 12:37 am

The answer: Wocka, wocka, wocka!

The question: What do Fozzie Bear and Daisuke Matsuzaka have in common?

**crickets**

Just an ugly start from Dice. Effective enough, I guess, but ideally you’re not plowing into your bullpen after five innings in the first game of a 10-game road trip.

The thing is, even when Matsuzaka isn’t Wocka’ing the whole park — like in his last start — his pitch counts still mount early due to all the deep counts and the bevy of foul balls he seems to induce. Actually sounds a lot like the right-handed version of Jon Lester, just with less strikeouts, which certainly is a key factor.

But let’s face it, with a BB/9 of almost 6 and a BABIP of under .200 (entering tonight; it will decrease after this one), he’s been extremely lucky in the runs allowed department.

On the plus side, his HR rate has remained low, so no crooked numbers.

With Wakefield, Lester, and Matsuzaka in the rotation, hopefully the walk-fest won’t prove to be an all too common occurrence this season.

**prays to the BABIP deities and does superstitious Paps-inspired Celtic dance**
jvwalt says:

May 6th, 2008 at 6:11 am

Eckersley said some interesting stuff on the postgame last night. His observation: Dice-K’s style leads to high pitch counts. Now, obviously eight walks is excessive. But according to Eck, Dice-K “just does not give in,” and would rather walk a batter than serve up a hittable pitch. Eck pointed out that, in Japan, starters only pitch once a week but are expected to go deep into their starts and rack up high pitch counts.

If you buy the reasoning — and it makes sense to me — then Matsuzaka is trying to change a lifelong mound strategy of “effective nibbling” in order to fit the American pattern of more starts and lower pitch counts.
Tim Daloisio says:

May 6th, 2008 at 9:43 am

I’ll stay on record…..until he controls the zone, he cannot be called an ace. As pointed out, he won’t keep getting himself out of putting runners on base and running deep pitch counts. It will catch up with him.

That said…he picked up a win and lowered his ERA…so what do I know…
Evan Brunell says:

May 6th, 2008 at 9:56 am

Question:

What if Dice-K continues to walk a ton, but his ERA stays under 3? Is it possible he’s the pitching version of Vladimir Guerrero?
Shawn Medeiros says:

May 6th, 2008 at 10:11 am

Evan you bring up a good point here. Made me laugh at least, but I do think I could agree with you on this statement. Also, he is not an ace until he gets these walks down.
Sean O says:

May 6th, 2008 at 10:24 am

Evan: just not gonna happen. Eventually, there’s going to be a nasty regression to the mean, and it takes just one 8 run, 1.1 IP nightmare for that to happen. Matsuzaka is nowhere near this good, and he needs to just trust his stuff and pitch.

It’s not like we have the ‘03 Sox on defense either. Just throw your fastball.
Daniel Rathman says:

May 6th, 2008 at 10:38 am

Evan:

Nice thought…but his BABIP can’t possibly stay at .189. Once it starts rising, the runs will start coming — unless he pares-down his walk-rate. FWIW, his FIP is currently 4.37.