Daisuke Matsuzaka, no. 18

Birth Date: September 13, 1980 in Tokyo, Japan

Height/Weight: 6'0", 185 lbs.

Contract: 6 years for $52 million (through 2012)

During the 2007 season, Matsuzaka had 15 wins and 12 losses. He allowed 100 runs, all of them earned. He faced 874 batters and gave up 191 hits. He struck out 201 of them, walked 80 of them, and hit 13 of them with a pitch. He gave up 25 home runs. His ERA was an average 4.40 and his WHIP was 1.324. It's certainly not a bad record.

He has a four-seam fastball in the low to mid nineties and a two-seam fastball in the low nineties. A cutter and a splitter both in the high eighties. A slider in the mid eighties and a curveball in the low eighties. He also has a changup. Then there's the legendary gyroball, which apparently is only thrown by accident and a handful of other pitches that are primarily thrown by Japanese pitchers such as the forkball and the shuuto.

I've been pondering what to say about Matsuzaka for awhile now. And I just don't know. I suppose what it really comes down to is: will he be better next season? Terry Francona seems to thinks so (or, at least, that was the line he was feeding to the public at the end of last season) but I have a hard time agreeing with him. The general consensus seemed to be that he needed to adjust to pitching on fewer days rest and that he needed to adjust to the longer season. Historically, Japanese pitchers have seen a decline in their second year here and they all had to deal with the same adjustments as Matsuzaka. Even the great Hideo Nomo declined in his second year (of course, he went from really, really good to just really good.)

I'm not saying that next season isn't going to be pretty. I just think that $6 million dollars is a lot to pay a guy to be average. Part of me wants to believe: Well, he's Japanese. He went home in October dissatisfied with his performance last season (he said as much in a Japanese interview) and so he's spent the off season working hard on improving his stuff. Of course, he doesn't strike me as being as old school Japanese as Okajima but what do I know.