Varitek Q & A
Here are Jason Varitek's comments about Matsuzaka's performance Monday night:
It was good. Every time he takes the ball, it's different. He has so many pitches to work with. he came our of the bullpen with what seemed to be a good cutter. I talked to (pitching coach) John Farrell before the game because some of his other pitches he didn't seem to have a feel for.
But he has so many pitches. We we able to mix and match the other pitches in there as the game went on. he threw some good splits. he located his fastball well, with the combination of that and his cutter and mixed in his curveball and his slider.
(On the ground ball outs)
They came off of his cutter and his split. He kept both those pitches down but utilized the cutter on both sides of the plate.
(On Matsuzaka's development)
I'm learning as I'm going. When he's got that many pitchesd, any given day it could be fastball split. It could be curveball changeup. You just try to mix and match what he has. When he came out of spring he had a tremendous slider and he had a tremendous curveball. Today he didn't have a good curveball and he didn't have a good slider, but he had a good cutter. It gives you different options.
(On getting all his pitches going)
I still think it all comes off of the location of his fastball. I think that's the biggest key. Whichever ones complement that that day, we can utilize.
(On the difference over the last two starts)
He had a better feel. His start against Seattle (7 earned runs), the location of any of his pitches wasn't there, but he battled enough to keep us in the game ... Today, he had a good fastball, good cutter (and) threw some real good splits.
Posted at 11:48 PM
E-mail this entry to a friend