We can’t expect to get the straight skinny from the Red Sox. They will insist the DL thing is legit, that their honest belief is that Dice-K’s troubles are strictly medical. We may hear more about the evils of the World Baseball Classic. They have too much at stake to say otherwise.
But it’s pretty obvious something else is going on. Dice-K has made a couple of veiled allusions to an issue outside of baseball. If that’s the case, he should be given as much time as he needs to address the situation. It’s not as if he’ll be missed.
No one is going to miss a starter with an ERA of 8.23 and a WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) of 2.20. No one is going to miss someone against whom opponents are batting .378 with an OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) of 1.091. No one is going to miss someone who routinely gives up four- or five-run leads.
The fact is the Red Sox are uniquely prepared to replace Mr. Matsuzaka. We’ll see the first option Thursday night when John Smoltz makes his Red Sox debut in Washington. A second option is already in place. His name is Justin Masterson. Option three is down there in Pawtucket, where an increasingly restless Clay Buchholz has proved to be too good for Triple A.
Of course, no one in power will say the team is already better off knowing that Dice-K will not be pitching for the foreseeable future. But we all know that happens to be the case.
The goal now is to restore him to, well, what, exactly?
He’s not what he was supposed to be; this much we know. He was billed as a superpitcher, a guy who threw in the mid-to-high 90s and who augmented this uberheater with as many as five auxiliary pitches, all, as they say, in the “plus’’ category. (We won’t go anywhere near that gyroball nonsense.)
We’ve never seen that guy.
