Posted by Michael Street on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 11:29 pm

It seems hard to remember now how much hoopla surrounded the signing of Daisuke Matsuzaka by the Red Sox in December 2006.

In the end, Boston spent $51.1M for the posting fee to the Seibu Lions, for the right just to talk to Dice-K, nearly doubling the $27M that the Rangers bid. The free-spending Mets and Yankees reportedly offered $39 and $36M respectively. (As a footnote, the pinstripers settled for the consolation prize of Kei Igawa, signed for $46M—he’s gone on to a miserable 2-4, 6.66 ERA, 1.76 WHIP in 71.2 MLB innings and is currently in AAA.)

The Red Sox then paid Matsuzaka a further $52M for the next six years of the pitchers’ services, courtesy of Scott “Soak ‘Em” Boras.

After two good, but not stellar, seasons for Boston, the $100 Million Man (that’s Matsuzaka, not Boras, who’s worth several times that amount) got off to an awful start this year. Dice-K lost his first two starts by a combined 9 ER in just 6.1 IP, coughing up 14 H, including 3 HRs, and registering 5 Ks and 5 BBs.

The Sox shut him down for a month after that, claiming arm fatigue, but when he returned to the mound a little over a month later, he wasn’t any better. He went 1-4 in his next 6 starts, with a 7.22 ERA and 2.03 WHIP, allowing 5 HRs in 45 H in 28.2 IP.

No matter how you sliced it, Dice-K stunk, and Boston sat him down for much longer, basically deciding to rebuild his strength from the bottom up, working on his overall conditioning for several months in Florida. They cited his work in the WBC as a likely problem, since he’d pitched too many high-leverage innings without proper spring conditioning.

At the time, they cited no return date, and Dice-K ended up being out for nearly three months, returning last week to the Boston rotation. As I explained in my column in June, his return was important not only to the Red Sox, but also to the future of the WBC and the import of Japanese pitchers.

In some ways, the breakdown of older starters like Dice-K, Koji Uehara and even the limits put on Kenshin Kawakami, is going to push the attention of MLB teams towards drafting younger pitchers like Junichi Tazawa and away from older, more established NPB (Japanese pro baseball) starters.

And so Dice-K’s return—whether he realized it or not—carried import well beyond Boston’s Wild Card hopes, which were important enough. Since the departure of Dice-K, Boston has tried several pitchers to fill the missing hole in the rotation: John Smoltz, Paul Byrd, Junichi Tazawa, and Brad Penny, with results that can be described as mixed at best (Penny’s 5.25 ERA was the lowest of this bunch).

And since he’s been gone, they dropped from two games ahead of New York in the AL East to five games back, though they still lead in the Wild Card. With Tim Wakefield also battling injury issues, the Red Sox need Matsuzaka’s arm to get them to the playoffs—whether Dice-K or Clay Buchholz would be Boston’s #3 pitcher if they get there is another story.

In his first start back on September 15, he would not only face these pressures, but also a red-hot John Lackey and a first-place Angels team, which boasted eight .300 hitters. Dice-K looked a little shaky in the first inning, but he quickly calmed down to dominate them for six innings in his best outing of the year.

He began the game with two quick strikes to Chone Figgins, but then began to nibble around the zone and allowed the Angels’ leadoff hitter to work a walk. One of Dice-K’s problems in MLB has been his failure to challenge hitters (something typical of Japanese pitchers, for a variety of reasons) and the profusion of walks he allows.

In his first year in the league, Matsuzaka gave up 3.5 BB/9, a marginally acceptable rate from a pitcher who also struck out 8.8 batters per 9. In 2008, that walk rate ballooned to 5.0, while his strikeouts slid to 8.5. Only his 6.9 H/9 (best in baseball) kept his ERA as low as it was, since his 94 walks led the AL.

But after walking Figgins, he put down Macier Izturis, Bobby Abreu and Vlad Guerrero, without allowing Figgins (leading the AL in runs scored) to get farther than second base.

Dice-K was even more efficient in the next three innings. He retired everyone but Figgins, who once again got a free pass, needing only 36 pitches to get through those three innings.

Kendry Morales got the Angels’ first hit of the day in the top of the fifth, and Erick Aybar got a knock of his own one out later, giving Dice-K his first challenge: runners at the corners with one out, in a still-scoreless game.

But he calmly struck out Jeff Mathis and Chone Figgins to end the threat. Abreu hit a one-out double in the sixth to threaten again, but Dice-K struck out Guerrero on four pitches and got Torii Hunter to line out to Mike Lowell at third.

Tito Francona pulled Dice-K after he walked Morales to lead off the seventh, but Dice-K had still done a great job in his return, and the Boston faithful gave him an ovation loud enough to merit a hat-tip from Matsuzaka. He finished with 6.1 scoreless IP, having thrown just 93 pitches, walking three, striking out five, and surrendering just three hits.

Was this just a fluke? Dice-K would get his next chance to prove himself against the Baltimore Orioles five days later. This time around, Boston would anchor him to an early 3-0 lead, and Dice-K challenged the Orioles hitters. He fanned three of the first four hitters, with only Matt Wieters getting a single up the middle.

He kept throwing strikes through the third and fourth, retiring six of the next seven hitters, again only allowing just a single, this time to Michael Aubrey. And behind him, Boston kept adding to its lead, so that Dice-K entered the fourth with a 7-0 lead.

Wieters led off the fourth with a seeing-eye grounder that hopped over a sliding Alex Gonzalez’s glove, and Daisuke made his first mistake of the day. Falling behind 3-1 on Luke Scott, he left a fastball at the top of the zone, and Scott took it the other way for a two-run homer.

Though Dice-K can be vulnerable to the gopher ball when he doesn’t spot his pitches well, he also didn’t let this mistake bother him and set down the next two hitters in order.

Brian Roberts—AL King of Doubles—stroked a two-out double in the fifth, but that was Dice-K’s only problem in that inning, as he got a pop fly and two groundouts to set down the other O’s hitters. Matsuzaka wasn’t as efficient as in his previous start, a possible sign of trouble, and he slowed down in the sixth.

Leading off, Wieters got his third hit of the day (and second straight seeing-eye single) when he pulled a pitch down the line and it hopped over Victor Martinez’s glove. Dice-K  retired Markakis on a groundout, then walked Luke Scott and gave up a sharp single to Ty Wigginton.

With his pitcher at 110 pitches and the bases loaded, Francona came to get him, despite the five-run lead. As they work towards the playoffs, the Red Sox don’t need to take any chances at a loss.

Unfortunately, Ramon Ramirez (in relief of Dice-K) would walk Aubrey, pushing across the third earned run for Dice-K. Regardless, his line was still decent, certainly when compared to his earlier season struggles: 5.1 IP, 8 H (2 of them a bit fluke-y), 5 K and just 1 BB.

With one strong outing against a very good team and a good-enough outing against a decent team, Dice-K will face his real test this weekend, when the Red Sox visit the Yanks.

He’s scheduled to face Joba Chamberlain on Saturday, but that could change—along with the New York starting lineup and overall motivation—if the Yanks clinch a playoff berth in the next few days (their magic number is one as of this writing). Regardless, it will be a key outing for Dice-K to prove himself ready for the postseason, where his role remains undecided.

Whether he can rebound from a subpar 2009 to save the future of Japanese pitching imports and (perhaps) the WBC’s relationship with MLB will have to wait until 2010.