After watching the latter portion of today's Red Sox game I was quite impressed with the way Daisuke Matsuzaka manhandled the Royals. Granted he got a home run hit off of him but he also struck out 10 of the Royals hitters, an impressive feat for a first-time Major Leaguer. What impressed me the most was not how many strike-outs he got, or even how many outs in general that he got, it was the number of pitches that he has in his arsenal. The big hype around Matsuzaka is that he has the gyro ball, which on it's own is an amazing pitch but what a lot of sports writers fail to mention is just how many off-speed pitches Matsuzaka has, you can prepare for his gyro ball but then you may get his splitter, or his curve ball, or his slider, .etc. Essentially every time someone steps up to the plate against Matsuzak
a they are in danger of getting burned by one of his many pitches. Matsuzaka is still a young pitcher and he has many years of service for the Red Sox left in him. Hopefully, many World Series. This is why I ask the question did we see the future of the Red Sox today. Not only because Matsuzaka may very well be the future face of the Red Sox but he represents the willingness that the owners now have to spend money on players. Overall because of this we should see the Red Sox develop into a much better team. Right now though Dice-K fits the Red Sox mold perfectly. That mold being made around the pitching staff in that if you provide them a good defense(Lowell, Crisp, .etc) and the occasional clutch hit(Ortiz) and have excellent pitchers(Matsuzaka, Papelbon, .etc) victory is assured.
