Daisuke Matsuzaka Not Out Of The Red Sox Rotation, Yet

I'm not sure what was more painful to watch: Rory McIlroy's horrible collapse on the final day of the Masters or the Red Sox game last night against the Tampa Bay Rays, especially the first two innings. Coming into the game, the Rays had scored a total of 20 runs in 9 nine games, which was the least runs scored in the league at the time. In just two innings, the Rays scored 7 runs off Daisuke Matsuzaka and handed the Sox their largest loss of the season, 16 to 5.

In Matsuzaka's first start of the season, he had trouble throwing first-pitch strikes. Daisuke had to leave the game after 5 innings because he had already thrown 96 pitches. In a huge start for Matsuzaka, as people had already begun to speculate whether Matsuzaka would be replaced in the rotation even before his second start, he was a horrible from the beginning of the game. Although Daisuke wasn't wild and limited his walks, he was tagged for seven runs on eight hits including two home runs. Red Sox manager Terry Francona said, "It looked like he was trying to establish fastball and breaking ball, and he pumped strikes. Then we got into the second and everything went to the middle of the plate. There was one walk and seven balls hit right on the barrel. We love when guys throw strikes, but there were balls middle-middle for seven hitters." Daisuke could only last two plus innings before being pulled by Francona. The Rays scored 6 runs in the second inning before Daisuke could even record an out on a Matt Joyce ground out, which got an extremely loud, sarcastic cheer from the crowd. Terry Francona put it best when he said, “It was a horrendous second inning."

Although Daisuke has begun the season with an 0-2 record, a horrific 12.86 ERA, and has only been able to pitch in just seven innings in two starts, the Red Sox don't plan to make any moves with Matsuzaka just yet. Terry Francona said about replacing Daisuke in the rotation, “I think if we do things like that, we’ll set ourselves up for some really bad mistakes. It was tough to watch. Shoot, if you make decisions based on emotion and after [two] bad starts, we wouldn’t have a team left. You can’t do that.’’