Game 143 Recap/Game 144 Preview

LAA – 000 000 001 – 1 – 6 – 1BOS – 000 002 02x – 4 – 9 - 0The Red Sox opened a three game set against the AL West leading Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim with a 4-1 victory in an entertaining and fast paced game. The story of this game of course was Daisuke Matsuzaka who gave the Sox six shutout innings.The temptation is to view Matsuzaka’s effort as outstanding and it is hard to quarrel with three hits, no runs over six plus. There was some good and bad within the effort.On the good side I thought Matsuzaka’s fastball looked especially sharp. The gun at Fenway was consistently 92-93 but it looked like he had a little hop at the end as he got a number of pop ups and some broken bats. The other thing I liked was that he seemed to work at a better tempo than he has in the past. Matsuzaka will never be a fast worker but he looked rhythmic on Tuesday night.On the bad side Matsuzaka’s control was still not sharp. He threw strikes on just 56% of his pitches including just 9 of 24 fir...