The Case Of The $103 Million Monster

His stuff is the stuff of legend-and the Red Sox are doing all they can to unleash the beast. Is that enough evidence to make Daisuke Matsuzaka your ace?

For all the talk about camaraderie and competition, fantasy is also about money. So if Daisuke Matsuzaka is one of the first pitchers you draft, you'll be happy to know that the Red Sox are doing everything possible to protect your investment.

John Henry has gambled $103 million on the 26-year-old righty, known in Japan as The Monster, so the owner's minions are making sure that Matsuzaka's every need is addressed, that every precaution is taken and, most important, that every word to and from the pitcher, on the field and in the clubhouse, is understood. (Yes, that's catcher Jason Varitek hunched in front of his locker with his nose in a Japanese phrase book.) But nobody has any way of really knowing how the great Matsuzaka will respond when he confronts an inevitable cycle of failure, or if—perish the thought!—thousands of fans jump from their seats in Fenway Park and yell the phrase that needs no interpretation: You suck!

Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui arrived from Japan and exploded into crossover stars, but others—Hideki Irabu and Kazuo Matsui, most notably—were lost in translation. Despite his 98 mph fastball, which prompted comparisons to Nolan Ryan, Irabu pitched more like Ryan Seacrest. Irabu was a loner, and neither he nor his Yankees teammates tried to bridge the language barrier. The lasting memory of his six-year big league career was George Steinbrenner's calling him a fat toad.

The Mets spent $20 million on Kaz Matsui and got almost nothing in return. A veteran major league scout assigned to the Far East thinks Matsui simply didn't possess Ichiro's natural strength: "He bailed out as he swung far more than Ichiro, so when you pitched him inside, he had nothing left in his swing to drive the ball." Bobby Valentine, the former Mets manager who's on his second tour in Japan, contends that the team mishandled Matsui (a popular refrain) by placing him in competition with star prospect José Reyes.

The Red Sox are taking no such chances, surrounding the man they call D-Mat with a staff worthy of an emperor. Besides a personal interpreter/assistant, Matsuzaka has a media interpreter, a trainer and a masseuse, all natives of Japan. Boston even added middle reliever and fellow countryman Hideki Okajima. "It's a daunting challenge, making that transition," says Red Sox president/CEO Larry Lucchino. "Hopefully, by putting in the right support system, we'll put him at ease."

Varitek's presence will help far more than any words can say. He and new pitching coach John Farrell, who's also learning Japanese, spent part of the winter reviewing DVDs of Matsuzaka's starts with the Seibu Lions to learn how he likes to use his stuff. For example, Matsuzaka throws a big, Barry Zito-like curveball—the kind of pitch that doesn't fit into smaller strike zones. "Because he was the Johan Santana of Japan, the umpires would call that pitch for a strike," says the veteran scout. "When he starts out over here, the strike zone is going to shrink for him. The umpires are not going to give it to him some days, and he's not going to get hitters to chase it." But Varitek is excellent at recognizing an umpire's tendencies and then adjusting. "He is going to be fully prepared to have a Plan B or a Plan C with Matsuzaka's stuff," says the scout. "He is a nononsense guy, perfect for this situation. If you had a young catcher, Matsuzaka would basically be on his own."

Adds Valentine: "His stuff is good, but the combination of the right pitches is really important since he has many breaking balls. Some complement his hard stuff, and others don't."

Most elite pitchers work the lower half of the strike zone, but Matsuzaka, like Roy Oswalt, has the kind of velocity and breaking stuff to beat hitters above the belt. "There might be only half a dozen pitchers in the world who can do that consistently," says the scout.

But in any league, high fastballs often become home runs. While Matsuzaka has faced power hitters in Japan, he has not had to deal with lineups that feature a Johnny Damon at the top and a Robinson Canó near the bottom. He is going to have ugly days—and nobody knows what will happen then. In Japanese stadiums, the players are separated from the fans in the stands; there's a comfortable buffer. That's not how it is at Fenway, where pitchers warm up 10 feet from the mob in the centerfield bleachers and where they walk into the jaws of failed expectation when they get knocked out early.

As scouts checked into Matsuzaka's background last fall, some were told by a friend of the pitcher's—and this was taken as a gentle warning—that he has never really faced adversity on the field. He has always been dominant, like a boxer who's never had his nose bloodied, never been knocked down. When that happens, will Matsuzaka stay down, like Irabu did, or will he immediately pop back up, the way Nomo did?

The Red Sox are betting The Monster will rise to the challenge. Are you?

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