Will he shine or pitch like the opposing pitchers?
The Red Sox currently have a 10-1 lead over the Blue Jays. Dice-K is about to start the 5th inning. In keeping with my theory about Dice-K, Daisuke Matsuzaka will throw a ton of pitches, make this a much closer game than it should be, and not make it to the 7th inning.
I’d love to be proven wrong.
I haven’t exhaustively analyzed all his starts – but a few points:
1. last night, the umpire had a ridiculously tiny strike zone. I said to myself in the first innning that this was going to be a high scoring game.
2. it is maddening how often dice-k will get ahead in the count and then lose the strike zone and/or nibble to waste pitches and go to 3-2.
3. in the inning in question, he had ridiculously bad luck – same buzzard luck as with the Yankees start. here is the inning:
– stairs walked – ok bad move – but stairs is ridiculously hot
– rios hits a lazy fly misplayed by coco – should be 1 out
– frank thomas gets an infield single as it tips off dice-k’s glove – should be 2 out.
no hard hit balls at this point…
– glaus homers. ok bad move – but glaus has killed dice-k so far this year…should be only a 2 run shot with 2 outs.
– overbay singles
– hill flies out….should be the third out, Sox still leading 10-3.
this is really how it should have gone in that inning. Beckett had a similar bout of bad luck with some runs scored with almost zero hard-hit balls against the yanks.
the only difference is, for some reason, Dice is giving up the long ball to hurt himself in these bad luck innings – whereas Beckett seems to have cured himself of this problem for the most part this year.
Dice-K, Go for the 15th!
Dice-K starts, Red Sox win 13-10, all is well. The Sox are now 7-10 in Dice-K starts since June 1.
The answer to my question is that Dice-K gave up 7 runs in the 6th inning with a 10-1 lead. Proving that, at least recently, the best chance the Red Sox have to win when Dice-K pitches is to get him the heck out of the game after five innings. Note the drop-off in quality over Dice-K’s last six starts:
Uh.. can I take back what I said last week?