This is probably the biggest spring training question floating around the league this year. The Boston Red Sox paid multi-millions of dollars to just to gain sole negation writes for the 26 year Japanese Pitcher. With the dreadful Scott Boras as his agent, they gain another $52 million on a six year contract. This will end up as the smartest thing or the stupidest thing the Red Sox have done. Either he’ll continue on his monstrous pitching performances, or he will dud out and fade into obscurity.

The last time that I remember this sort of media whirlwind was when Hideo Nomo was brought over to the majors by The Los Angeles Dodgers. After a sort stint in the minors, and the player strike, he was brought up to pitch in the big leagues. After an All Star and Rookie of the Year first season, he slowly declined and now is not on a major or minor league roster. I think a big deal of his success his rookie season was attributed to his “tornado” delivery. It was such a strange and unorthodox windup, that many players couldn’t figure it out. In the following seasons players “figured” him out and his ERA went up pretty much every season after that.

There are however some differences comparing “Dice-K” and Nomo. Dice-K is expected to make the rotation right out of spring training as a rookie. I’m not for sure if they’ve officially announced their opening day starter yet either. Nomo only pitched five seasons in Japan, to where Dice-K had eight full seasons. Dice-K also has had some MLB experience playing in last years World Baseball Classic (WBC). This, however, shouldn’t be used as “real performances” for him. The MLB players playing for their perspective countries were only 2 weeks in to spring training. There were some slow starts for the MLB players in the WBC. He was named the MVP for the WBC.

When it comes down to it Matsuzaka, is whole lot more experienced pitcher than Nomo was, and a little experience facing MLB caliber players. Matsuzaka is also a more decorated player with the MVP and the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award.

Will he live up to the Hype surrounding him? Sort of. He’s should have a pretty decent season. I don’t foresee him being an All Star nor in the running for a Cy Young, but it will be an adequate season for most pitchers, but for the money they paid it will be a bit sub par. I’m guessing he’ll end up in the neighborhood of 13-10 with a 3.8 ERA. This numbers are pretty good for a rookie all and all, but he’s really not a true rookie with those eight years in Japan pitching since he was 19. I think a lot of his record will deal with not getting the run support he needs. Japanese baseball is still more of a finesse game whereas the American MLB is a higher scoring bash fest in most cases. Outside of Manny (when he’s not going to car auctions) and Ortiz, their lineup is lot of “should do well”, and recovering from injuries. So, their run support is a big unknown right now.

I think in the future instead of declining, like Nomo did, Matsuzaka is going to become a much better pitcher. Once he figures out a lot of the big batters in the AL, and some in the NL, he’ll become the pitcher that they paid for. He should be in running for Cy Young awards and All Star games. I don’t think he’ll be as dominating as he was in Japan, but he’ll be an ace/two pitcher for The Red Sox in the near future.

I am anticipating that first Red Sox, Yankees game where Dice-K will be on the hill for the BoSox. It will be interesting to see if it will be in Boston or New York, and the reaction he’ll get from the crowd. Also, it will fun to see how he handles that big lineup of the Yanks. I will watch from home and enjoying seeing how he fares.