18 days ’til Opening Day: Daisuke Matsuzaka

There are 18 days left until that best day of the year, MLB’s Opening Day.

18 is also the number that Daisuke Matsuzaka wears. He was heavily hyped going into last season (mostly because of gyroball, his performance at the World Baseball Classic and the over $50 million the Red Sox paid just to have the rights to negotiate with him).

But while he didn’t live up to the hype — he wasn’t an All-Star caliber pitcher — Dice-K did pitch well last year. His ERA (4.40) was below the league average, and he had 201 strikeouts in 204 innings. That’s good. He’s still only 27, coming to the U.S. younger than a lot of players from Japan who come over. So he still has a lot of room to improve. Matsuzaka is scheduled to start the second of the two games the Red Sox are scheduled to play in Japan against the A’s.