A Tale of two Matsuzaka's between the Team Japan and Boston. (AP Photos)
I was hoping that finally dropping Dice-K from my Fantasy Baseball Team would serve as an offering of sorts to the Baseball Gods. He could be my sacrificial lamb, and once finally freed from the clutches of my evil GM ways, he could truly flourish like the “national treasure” he is. However it now looks like he’s floundering further down that rabbit hole instead, and the natives are beginning to get restless. I did an experiment similar to this earlier this year when Josh Beckett was having (is this really past tense now?) his struggles, and up until now it has worked without much flaw.
Prior to trading Becket for Jason Werth, in what I now consider to maybe be a hasty move, the right hander was 4-2 with a high ERA of 5.08. He was far from the Josh Beckett we’re used to in Boston. The decision was done purely by looking at the numbers, and I completely left my heart out of the equation, which may have been a mistake however I don’t think so. Since trading Beckett on May 27th he has gone 3-1 with an ERA of 4.16, nothing to brag about for sure, but still a definite improvement and I’ll take Red Sox wins over Fantasy ones any day of the week. I considered it a Fantasy Sacrifice Success story.
Now enter the Dice-K, who I also *gulp* had on my staff. I figured I wouldn’t be able to get a sack full of jelly beans for him in a trade, so I mercifully released him to the land of waivers, my sacrifice to the Gods. However after last nights debacle of a game I can obviously see my ethnocentric view of the Baseball Universe is skewed, and the sacrifice was truly a bust. As the boos rained down upon the WBC MVP last night you could clearly see that the tide of Red Sox Nation’s patience has hit a low. And as we know with the ocean, when the tide is low, sometimes ugly things are revealed, and the fans reaction matched the putrid performance Dice-K has given us thus far this year.
The Red Sox have now been backed into a corner as they almost have to do something with him now. I think that the best case scenario here would be to have him willingly (hah!) go down to Pawtucket to work out what ever demons are chasing him and get them exorcised. Placing him on the DL “just because” solves nothing, and throwing him in our bullpen means we have to partially break-up the best pen in the league, which I’m not too fond of either. Even if he was placed in the pen, he wouldn’t be getting the normal workout he needs there which would be detrimental for the Sox if they have any inkling of bringing him back as a starter.
It’s a perplexing situation, but Dice-K’s always been a shifty character, and even last year when things were going “good” for him you had to watch through nervous eyes. Fantasies aside, the stark reality is that he just plain sucks this year, and I’m just hoping his pride doesn’t get in the way of the Red Sox needs, time will tell though, as his interesting chapter takes a new low turn.
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