Posted by Michael Street on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 1:27 am

There are quite a few Asian stories for the upcoming season—a topic for an upcoming column—but many of them focus on the fate of Japanese pitchers in 2010. Some of those questions were answered with the opening of Spring Training, and I’ll run down a few of them here.

Daisuke Matsuzaka lost most of last season to injury, an injury Boston traces to poor conditioning before the 2009 WBC, so the Red Sox are handing him very carefully this season. When he announced that his back was bothering him just as pitchers and catchers reported to camp, trainers went into overdrive.

They determined that there weren’t any real problems, but worked him gradually up to pitching from sixty feet, and he’s looked good—at least from a health perspective—in that time. He’s progressed from playing catch to a partial side session (the catcher stood up for the last 10 pitches) to a full side session of 65 pitches yesterday.

Assuming he can get one more good side session in midweek, he should face live batters by Friday. The Sox still aren’t sure if he’ll be ready for Opening Day, as his stuff isn’t as sharp as it should be; but more importantly, his back feels good and he’s had no problems getting loose.

This sounds like a minor story, but it’s a change from his workouts last season, when he was allowed to monitor his own progress. That led to a lack of communication between Dice-K and the trainers about how he was feeling—already an issue between a Japanese pitcher and an English-speaking staff—which in turn led to the injury.

Boston clearly thinks that he needs to be checked out more closely, hardly surprising considering they’ve invested $100M in him. By keeping such a close eye on him, they’ll hoping he’ll be ready by the start of the season, with better results this time around.

2009 was much kinder to Kenshin Kawakami, who had a 7-12 record, with a 3.68 ERA and 1.34 WHIP. That doesn’t sound impressive, but he stayed healthy and kept the home runs down, at least in the second half of the season, when he held batters to just 5 HRs in 67.2 IP, or a 0.7 HR/9 rate.

Keeping the ball in the yard is important for any pitcher, but Japanese pitchers in particular have problems with this in MLB. NPB players don’t knock home runs like MLB players, so NPB pitchers learn to get away with pitches up in the zone, leading to problems when they come to the States. Also, because 10 of 12 NPB teams play on turf instead of grass, Japanese pitchers who throw sinkers to induce groundballs less valuable.

Kawakami is learning, however; part of the reason for his second-half success in 2009 was working with a two-seamer, which has sinking action, inducing more grounders and keeping home runs down—at least when the pitcher can control it. Kawakami nailed Micah Owings in the head last September with a two-seamer, so it was clearly a work in progress for him.

He went into Spring Training determined to get control of the pitch, and showed it, at least in his debut. Against the Pirates last week, he needed just 17 pitches to retire six hitters. Only former Brave Ryan Church reached base, and Kawakami got him to hit into a double play, showing the power of the sinker. As often happens in spring training, Kawakami threw only two-seamers, but got 12 of the 17 pitches over the plate. It’s looking like he’s got the hang of it.

Another Japanese pitcher displaying excellent early control was Hisanori Takahashi, the latest Japanese player to come to the Mets. New York signed him to a minor-league deal last month, their reluctance tempered by the fact that he’s 40 years old and throws a screwball, the most debilitating pitch on a guy’s arm.

It’s too soon to see if his arm can stand the beating of a major-league season, but he checked out well in his first appearance. The Mets are pushing their pitchers to throw strikes this year, since they finished second to the lowly Nats in walks in 2009. Takahashi responded well, striking out the side in his first inning of work, en route to three innings of shutout ball, fanning six, walking none, and surrendering one hit.

The Mets broke an early 5-5 tie in the game while Takahashi was on the mound, giving him a victory in his very first American professional outing. Sure it’s in a minor-league game, but the hitters are usually ahead of the pitchers at this point, so it’s a good sign. At least he’s shown the Mets staff he can find the strike zone.

Next week, we’ll have a look at how far the Asian batters are ahead of the Asian pitchers—if, indeed, they are.