Considering the Dice-K Dilemma

"Are you ready to listen yet?"

Peter Gammons know calls Dice-K the Riddler.  I’d prefer to call him The Enigma, though I’ve called him Diva-K in the past.  He is an incredibly talented pitcher who nonetheless drives Red Sox crazier than Manny “Money” Ramirez ever did.

Dice-K arrived as a highly touted front-line starter destined to conquer America.  He had 6 “plus” pitches.  But somewhere along the road to glory something went seriously wrong.  It started well.  He was a key component of Red Sox 2007 World Series championship (32 starts, 15-12, 4.40 ERA, 201 Ks, 1.32 WHIP) by eating up over 200 innings as advertised.  He had a mystifying 2008 season (29 starts, 18-3, 2.90 ERA, 154 Ks, 1.32 WHIP in only 167 innings).  Notice that consistency in the WHIP.  He gave up 13 fewer HRs.  He put guys on base at the same rate, but fewer scored.  The maddening aspects began to kick in.  But it was easy to look at the record and ERA and get hopeful for the future.

Then started the injuries and power struggles.  Francona has said that he essentially can’t talk with Dice-K.  There is a cultural divide that seems quite ginormous.  His WHIP and ERA have gone up, innings have gone down.  The frustration factor has correlated with the WHIP and ERA.

Prior to Monday night’s mammoth meltdown against the Rays, the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo had a great article in his Sunday Notes addressing the situation.  He spent alot of time talking to Bobby Valentine, who was a manager in Japan while Dice-K dominated there.  While I’m not always in agreement with his analysis, in this case he is quite perceptive.  Dice-K has had to do more than adapt to a new, smaller ball and pitching every 5 days instead of once a week.  The whole way you think about pitching is different than in Japan.

Valentine said that because the Japanese are not so hung up on pitch counts, battling a hitter and not giving in to him, and then getting him on a 3-2 count is thought to be a great battle between pitcher and hitter.

Valentine is right. That is the fundamental difference in the way Matsuzaka’s pitch counts are perceived here and in Japan. When Dice-K goes to 3-2, people begin to roll their eyes and give it the old, “Here we go again.’’ In Japan, he could run his pitch count as much as he wanted as long he won the battle with the hitter. But as soon as his pitch count reaches 90-something here, it’s time to take him out of the game.

What Dice-k has not learned is that you don’t want to win an at bat, but set a guy up to get him out 3 times (or 4).  You still need all your pitches to do that.  He’s focusing on the battle, not the war, so to speak.  Despite the Red Sox mistakes in handling him, this is a fairly easy change in approach.

What is also interesting, read as disappointing, is that he is on a staff with some incredibly successful pitchers.  But he doesn’t seem to have had a chat with them.  The great Ted Williams talked batting with EVERYONE he met.  He talked to every other hitter so he could learn how to be more successful as a hitter.  Dice-K still acts like he’s “the Man” instead of wanting to learn how to be successful in a new environment.  If he was like Ted Williams, he’d be talking pitching with Beckett, Lester, Buchholz, and others.  He’d learn English to do that, and as he did that.

On WEEI today, the idea seemed to be that Dice-K was either overly literalistic or purposefully defiant.  He either interpreted attack the strike zone into the middle of the plate, or is going toe-to-toe with Francona in a way not seen since Manny was shipped out of town.  Either way, he makes himself look horrible.

What should the Red Sox do?  He has no trade value except as a batting practice pitcher.  They can’t really send him back to Japan.  Maybe they just let him do it his own way.  See what happens, it can’t be any worse than the other night.  Let him pitch the whole 9 innings without a pitch count.  Just tell him to win the game.  After all, there was a time when pitchers routinely threw well in excess of 100 pitches.  The 1975 World Series was not the only time Luis Tiant tossed over 130 pitches.  Lots of highly successful (Hall of Fame) pitchers regularly threw far more than 100/game.

By the way, why in the world hasn’t El Tiante gotten into the Hall of Fame?  Something that is pretty clear is that Dice-K is not going into the Hall of Fame.