Daisuke Matsuzaka rips the Red Sox training regimen in the Japanese press:
“If I’m forced to continue to train in this environment, I may no longer be able to pitch like I did in Japan. The only reason why I managed to win games during the first and second years (in the U.S.) was because I used the savings of the shoulder I built up in Japan. Since I came to the Major Leagues, I couldn’t train in my own way, so now I’ve lost all those savings.”
The most interesting part is that, based on the original article in Japanese as relayed by WEEI, it appears as though Dice-K is telling the Red Sox that racial differences between Japanese and American pitchers require different physical training and rehab approaches. Yes, I’m sure that has everything to do with it and the facts that (a) Matsuzaka threw about 10 gazillion pitches a game while playing in Japan; and (b) wouldn’t know how to work efficiently if an efficiency expert fell from the sky, landed on his head and started to wiggle have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
But hey, I’m prone to cynicism and I could be wrong. Indeed, maybe all Dice-K needs in order to get his arm back in order is a manager sympathetic to the racial differences in players. Just like you “don’t find too many brothers in New Hampshire,” maybe it’s just the natural evolutionary order of things that you don’t find too many Japanese workhorses in Boston.
