I almost feel sorry for Red Sox fans. Almost. Former ace-in-the-making turned grumpy old man Daisuke Matsuzaka has had harsh words for the Red Sox training staff and management. Essentially, Dice-K blamed the Sox for not letting him practice his insanely long throwing sessions called “nagekomi.” Here’s what the Sox pitcher had to say:
“If I’m forced to continue to train in this environment, I may no longer be able to pitch like I did in Japan,” he told the website. “The only reason why I managed to win games during the first and second years 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.”
Terry Francona responded by saying he was “disappointed” with the comments. Dice-K’s issues with the Sox management clearly were not handled in the right way. However, I can’t say that I think he’s wrong. It seemed to work for him. Maybe he would’ve broken down anyway… but the result would have been the same.
Via Boston.com:
“We had made huge strides [in communicating] during our meetings,” said Francona. “So to hear him say that — to have him air it out publicly — I’m disappointed.”
Francona said that he had talked to Matsuzaka within the last two days and thought he and the pitcher had left the meeting with an agreement to follow the team’s regimen. Matsuzaka’s statements, made after the meeting, imply that he wants to be able to work his shoulder back into shape on his own training schedule. And they thought Manny was a pain in the ass.
“For $102 million, if [Red Sox owner John Henry] came down and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ and we said, ‘We’re letting [Daisuke] do it his own way,’ he probably wouldn’t like that very much,” said Francona.
“I know there’s frustration, but it’s unfortunate for [Matsuzaka] to say that,” Francona said. “I thought everybody was on board with what we were doing.”
Francona said that the disappointment stems mostly from the fact that communication between Matsuzaka and the organization had seemingly strengthened recently. In the past, the Red Sox manager has said that the lines of communication are often muddled because meetings with the pitcher last twice as long due to the amount of time it takes to translate Matsuzaka’s thoughts.
“I thought we’d opened the lines of communication better. I even had him put in writing some of the things he had to say to make things clearer,” said Francona. “We’ve had a lot of meetings. There have been some cultural differences. There were a lot of things that could cause him anxiety. I didn’t want to be one of those things.”
Tags: baseball, boston red sox, daisuke matsuzaka, dice-k, MLB, terry francona
