Nick Green hit a walk off homer in the bottom of the 9th to give the Red Sox a big win over Atlanta. Said Green (as quoted in the Globe):
“To be honest with you, I didn’t realize what was going on,’’ Green said. “I didn’t even comprehend the fact that I had swung at the first pitch and it was a walkoff. I just knew that we still had to hit. When I hit second base, everybody’s standing at home plate, then I realized what was going on.
Meanwhile, Daisuke Matsuzaka has gone on the DL — again. They’re calling it a right shoulder strain, the same thing they said back in April when he was on the DL and missed 5 weeks. My opinion is that he’ll probably miss at least that much time again before trying him out on the mound … perhaps significantly more.
In eight starts, Matsuzaka is 1-5 with an 8.23 ERA. Last year, he was 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA and a major league-best .211 batting average by opponents. Clearly, his pitching this year is a mess.
Matsuzaka is in the third season of a six-year, $52 million contract he signed after the Sox paid $51.11 million for the right to negotiate with him.
The Red Sox are blaming the World Baseball Classic (where Dice-K was MVP) since he’s done nothing but go down hill since then.
But please.
Matsuzaka throws way, way too many pitches each time he’s on the mound. He made a career in Japan throwing complete games with pitch counts around 125 and higher before signing with the Sox.
The concern with Dice-K isn’t that he has a “mild right shoulder strain” or “shoulder weakness” that might take some time to remedy. No, the real fear is that he’s thrown too many damn pitches in his lifetime so that he’ll never be able to quite recover the velocity he once had.
For all the money they’ve spent on Matsuzaka, the Sox need to take whatever time is necessary to fully determine, and hopefully resolve, his physical problems.
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