How unusual is Daisuke Matsuzaka?

There’s going to be an orgy of coverage about Dice-K’s stellar pitching debut for the Red Sox today, and of course it is foolish to extrapolate from one start. That said, I can’t resist quoting from Tom Singer’s mlb.com postmortem on the start: “His ball moves funny. To me, it was like working a knuckleball ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

There's going to be an orgy of coverage about Dice-K's stellar pitching debut for the Red Sox today, and of course it is foolish to extrapolate from one start. That said, I can't resist quoting from Tom Singer's mlb.com postmortem on the start: "His ball moves funny. To me, it was like working a knuckleball pitcher," said Jeff Nelson, the plate umpire who spent the day looking over catcher Jason Varitek's shoulders. "His ball definitely moves differently. It will break every which way, like I haven't seen out of anyone else's hand. You just don't know. That's why I liken it to knuckleball pitchers." UPDATE: For a play-by-play description of Daisuke's first game, you would be hard-pessed to beat Bill Simmons.

There’s going to be an orgy of coverage about Dice-K’s stellar pitching debut for the Red Sox today, and of course it is foolish to extrapolate from one start. That said, I can’t resist quoting from Tom Singer’s mlb.com postmortem on the start:

“His ball moves funny. To me, it was like working a knuckleball pitcher,” said Jeff Nelson, the plate umpire who spent the day looking over catcher Jason Varitek’s shoulders. “His ball definitely moves differently. It will break every which way, like I haven’t seen out of anyone else’s hand. You just don’t know. That’s why I liken it to knuckleball pitchers.”

UPDATE: For a play-by-play description of Daisuke’s first game, you would be hard-pessed to beat Bill Simmons.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

Tag: Sports

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