Rolling the Dice

With Matsuzaka onboard, the Red Sox now have, on paper, the strongest rotation in the AL East and arguably the strongest in the entire league. If Kenny Rogers was not turning 103, if Freddy Garcia was still in a White Sox uniform or Fransisco Liriano was slated to pitch a full season with the Twins, I might entertain other suggestion (If Clemens comes back to the Yankees, does an ancient rotation of All-Stars and Hall of Famers win out over the Sox?). But right now, the five toeing the rubber for the Boston are the best of the lot: Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka, Wakefield and Papelbon can all dominate opponents on any given day. And that's not counting on the flashes of brilliance we saw from John Lester, who may surprise us all with a speedy recovery from cancer and work his way into the '07 fold.

Of course, it remains to be seen where Barry Zito and his 12-6 curveball and 88mph fastball ends up, but should he land in the NL, the Sox have the potential to throw FOUR names into the Cy Young race right off the bat. That's right, four. Yes, Schilling is 40, but don't count him out of another big year for the Sox. If he is healthy (famous last words), Schilling could win 18 games. If Papelbon, who is the biggest longshot on this short list, dominates the league like he did so often last year, he could find himself starting the All-Star game. You get the sense that Beckett, he with his seemingly limitless potential, is one day going to turn into a '86 Roger Clemens and trample the American League en route to a 25-3 season. And then there is Matsuzaka, who appears to be ready to stick his gyroball and WBC championship to the AL. And with apologies to Tim Wakefield - his knuckler still baffles, but his 20-game seasons are well behind him.

Wishful thinking for Sox fans? Of course. When, if ever, do rotations like this actually live up to their collective potential? But what intrigues me in the addition of Matsuzaka is not just his impact not on AL hitters, but his impact on his fellow pitchers. Already, baseball analysts are calling him the ace of the rotation, which I would argue doesn't sit well with at least two other pitchers on the team. Schilling is not the type of guy to sit back and let some virtually unknown entity walk into Fenway and claim the throne he has enjoyed since the departure of Pedro. He will challenge this kid to be better than him, to work harder and prepare harder. And with Zaka Khan's relative unfamiliarity with the American League, that will be a significant amount of work.

And then there is Beckett, who has all the Texas fire inside him to someday explode onto the scene. I think all the pressure people have put on him since he was in high school will soon bear the kind of fruit everyone expects. It seems hard to believe, but Beckett is only 26 this year, the age where things start clicking for both hitters and pitchers, and eventually, he is going to want to become the ace so many people, himself included, believe he will become. He won 16 ugly games last year and Boston fans wanted to hang him from the Fenway gallows. I think that, not to menton Dice-K's arrival, will motivate him to prove to everyone that he, in fact, should be the ace of the staff.

Papelbon? Should he perform at even a fraction of what he accomplished last year as a closer, he will, by default, have to be looked on as a future ace. But that remains to be seen.

So what should we expect from Matsuzaka? In finding any comparisons, all roads lead to Hideo Nomo, the first major pitching import from Japan. In his first year in 1995, Nomo (who was also 26 at the time) went 13-6 in 191 innings, striking out an impressive 236 batters. More importantly, his ERA was 2.54. that was a typical if not off year for Matsuzaka, who finished last season at 17-5. Do we play it safe and call something in the middle, say 16-6? Or do we bounce in either direction - the league's unfamiliarity with his stuff projects him at 19-5 - or the opposite - that his unfamiliarity with the league drops him to 13-11?

I hate predictions, but I will land on this: 14-7, 202 innings pitched, 197 strikeouts and a 3.78 ERA. Yes, about he same as Nomo, and not a bad season at all. But again the question begs: will he be the staff ace?