We Will Rebuild Him.

Daisuke Matsuzaka's 2009 season left quite a bit to be desired. He started off poorly, went on the DL, came back but continued to suck before he was banished to Florida for three months. The Florida stint seemed to work well for him, though, as when he came back he showed more of what had come to be expected of him in his two years here.

In a seeming effort to build on that progress, Matsuzaka is spending time at Athletes' Performance (which has apparently changed it's name from Athletes' Performance Institute) both last week and for five weeks starting in January. During the past week he was working on core strength and aerobic efficiency. With a VO2 Max of 50, he does seem to be relatively fit aerobically. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am more aerobically fit than Daisuke Matsuzaka--a girl has got to take her props where she can get them. [Aside: V02 Max is a way of measuring how effectively the body uses oxygen when it's working at it's maximum capacity. The higher the better. The idea is the more oxygen you can use, the more energy you can produce. If you're interested, there's an easy home test to estimate your VO2 Max here.]

He also got a glowing review from his trainer:

"After that he'll get in good shape. He'll get better strength on the core, and he doesn't have any worry for hip conditioning or anything. So, I think he's probably pretty much ready to go. He gets everything right. Once I coach him, he gets it. He's a great athlete."

So that's good.