Daisuke Matsuzaka

The Red Sox sent Daisuke Matsuzaka to the mound last night hoping to roll a seven, but with the knowledge they might roll snake-eyes.

The ‘pitching surplus’ the front office believed it had stocked last winter had turned out to be a mirage due to ineffectiveness (Penny and Smoltz) and injury (Matsuzaka and Wakefield).

The rapid maturation of Clay Buchholz had helped plug the dike, but the recent struggles of ace Josh Beckett caused many to question whether this team could make a run deep into October.

Now Boston has a problem like really no other in baseball which is that they really have too much pitching depth on their roster. This is obviously a good problem for Boston and today I will analyze who really deserves to be in their starting rotation. I will give a short synopsis of each pitcher and see if they deserve a spot in the rotation. I will also see if they deserve to be where they are today.

Josh Beckett and Jon Lester

Finally, the news coming out of Boston is good. After dominating the MLB with an 18-3, 2.90 ERA performance in 2008, the Red Sox knew something was wrong with Dice K this year.

Coming back from another great performance at the World Baseball Classic, which has been thoroughly dominated by Japan in it's two contests since inception, Red Sox fans were hopeful that Dice K would be able to build on last year's numbers.

The only problem was the World Baseball Classic.

Daisuke Matsuzaka went on the disabled list Sunday with a mild strain in his pitching shoulder.

He should have gone on the DL with a mild (or major) brain-strain. Or maybe a strain in his $100 million contract, as in the Red Sox are straining to cope with the fact that they have already forked over about $75 million for Matsuzaka and still owe him another $25 million.

In the summer leading up to the 2007 Major League Baseball season, the Boston Red Sox put 50 million dollars on the table just to speak to a pitcher from Japan. Reports of a pitch known as the "gyro" ball infatuated every baseball fan from coast to coast.

The deal was completed and Daisuke "Dice-K" Matsuzaka was brought to the Red Sox with open arms from The Nation.

His first season went by looking very average and not close to worth the money.  He went 15-12 with a 4.40 ERA.

Thanks to Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, the World Baseball Classic, Orestes Destrade et al., baseball in Japan is less of a mystery than it used to be. But here is a list of 10 things the average MLB fan probably doesn't know.

[If you want my credentials, I moved to Japan with my parents when I was seven years old, and lived there for 10 years as a child, attending around 200 baseball games in Japan. If you don't want my credentials, the facts are still the same.]

Some might call last night’s game a loss.  The box scores, for one, and the standings.

But a few months from now, looking back, it just might feel like a win.