http://0rz.tw/rvvfb The Red Sox can blame the World Baseball Classic all they want for the shoulder fatigue of right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka, and to a certain degree, they do have a point. It wasn't so much that Matsuzaka threw 65, 86 and 98 pitches in his three WBC starts -- with seven and six days of rest between his second and third starts, respectively. That workload is not excessive. What concerned the Red Sox even before those starts was that the club had no control over Matsuzaka's training regimen. After throwing 408 innings and pitching deep into the postseason two straight years -- when Boston wanted to give his body more recovery time, as Tampa Bay did with its starters coming off a long 2008 season -- Matsuzaka reported not to Boston's camp but to Japan's WBC camp on Feb. 15. The club's attempts to monitor his throwing program were futile, giving way to Japan's national fervor to win another WBC. The Red Sox, however, better hope it is only the WBC that caused Matsuzaka's fatigue. When Boston placed him on the disabled list, I thought not only about the WBC, but also about a story I did about Matsuzaka prior to the 2007 season, his first in the majors after a distinguished, and grueling, career in Japan. What stuck with me is how both the Red Sox and Scott Boras, the agent for Matsuzaka, were concerned about the ominous track record of Japanese starting pitchers when they jump to the big leagues. Both the club and the agent knew about a pattern in which Japanese starters have success in the majors for a year or two, but wear down in years three and four. "The greatest concern is ensuring his health," Boras said then, "not just this year but over the life of the contract and beyond. The history of the Japanese [starting] pitchers who have come here is concerning." The Red Sox, who study these things exhaustively, correlated the decline to age, with the dropoff occurring in the early 30s. But general manager Theo Epstein, when asked about the trend of third and fourth year declines, said, "We may be talking about a similar thing, just measured differently." Matsuzaka was 26 when he joined the big leagues, the same age as when Hideo Nomo made his jump. The other relevant comparisons are Kaz Ishii (28 when he joined MLB), Hideki Irabu (28) and Masato Yoshii (33). Nomo, Ishii, Irabu and Yoshii all had initial success. But the third and fourth seasons became treacherous. Nomo was much worse in his third year and released by the Dodgers in his fourth year. Ishii was done after his fourth year. Irabu made only five more starts after his fourth year. Yoshii was released after his third year. Here is one way to measure the track record that concerned Boras two years ago. I took the combined stats for the pitchers in question for their first two seasons. (In the case of Irabu, who made only nine starts in his first season, 1997, I took his 1997-99 numbers.) Then I compared those numbers to how they pitched in their third season. Take a look at the comparison: STAT COMPARISON SEASONS 1-2 SEASON 3 Pitcher W-L ERA K/9 W-L ERA K/9 Hideki Irabu 29-20 4.80 7.2 2- 5 7.24 6.9 Kaz Ishii 23-17 4.07 8.5 13- 8 4.71 5.1 Hideo Nomo 29-17 2.90 10.1 14-12 4.25 10.1 Masato Yoshii 18-16 4.17 5.8 6-15 5.86 4.7 Daisuke Matsuzaka 33-15 3.72 8.6 ？ In every case, the third year was a pothole. Their ERAs soared and, in all but one case, their strikeout rate dropped. Nomo did recover to post two good seasons with the Dodgers later in his career, but otherwise he was mostly ordinary after the initial burst. The biggest concern for such a track record is the difference in how pitchers are used in Japan and in the majors. Matsuzaka pitched every sixth or seventh day in Japan in a shorter season, but his individual pitch counts wouldn't be allowed in America. He threw, for instance, 250 pitches in a high school game, 189 pitches on Opening Day 2003, 160 pitches in his second start of 2005 and 145 pitches in his penultimate start before signing with Boston. Perhaps most ominously, Matsuzaka threw 588 innings as a pro in Japan as a teenager. As former Red Sox teammate Curt Schilling said back in 2007, "He is a big league ace in the making. The question is, does he throw his last pitch at 31 or at 39?" The Red Sox for now have no serious concerns about Matsuzaka, not with his current shoulder fatigue and not long term. Said Epstein, "We think he'll be fine after taking a break for a couple of weeks. He went through a similar period last year." The Red Sox, it should be noted, are considered to run industry state-of-the-art maintenance and rehabilitation programs for pitchers. Perhaps Matsuzaka, as Pedro Martinez did, will need these periodic down times to manage his way through long seasons and the every-fifth-day routine. But if Matsuzaka retains his strength and elite pitching through the next season or two, he will be bucking the trend that concerned Boras upon Matsuzaka signing with the Sox. --

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