It seems safe to say that Daisuke Matsuzaka’s year has undergone a drastic shift in direction.

Dice-K has struggled the last couple of weeks, and there’s plenty of speculation that his season may be out of sorts.

A month and a half ago, Dice-K was being called a first-year phenom. After an occasionally rocky start, the Japanese ace was hitting his stride, and starting to show flashes of living up to the immense promise that greeted his arrival stateside.

Now, after three straight dismal performances - subpar isn’t strong enough - Matsuzaka finds himself soul searching and looking for a way to overcome the oncoming fatigue that begins to set in at a time when his Japanese season was traditionally just ramping up.

After last night’s stellar performance by Cancer Boy himself - and Jon Lester finally did show signs of being the impressive and occasionally dominant starter he was last year - it’s not a stretch to say that Dice-K has been the least impressive Red Sox starter of the past two weeks. Sure, Tim Wakefield had a rough outing Thursday, but he was coming off a back injury and hadn’t been scored upon in more than 19 innings before that. In other words, he had a nice get-out-of-jail free card to use.

At this point, the Dice-Man does not.

Here’s what it seems to come down to: Dice-K has all the pitches (perhaps too many, for that matter). He has the make-up to be a huge big game pitcher. Everyone’s seen it, and they expect to see it again. He has had incredibly one-sided outings as recently as last month.

Now, as he finds himself tiring down the stretch, falling back into monstrously long innings and high pitch counts, he needs to find a groove. He needs to find a way to get outs more consistently. He needs to find a way to mow batters down with more consistency. He needs to hit cruise control.

He needs to be the Dice-K the Sox saw at the World Baseball Classic last spring, and the Dice-K who dominated Japanese hitters for the Seibu Lions as recently as last year. He needs to do it for himself, to regain the strut and saunter that he arrived in Boston with.

It might seem like sacrilege because of their combined wins, but Dice-K and Wake have been the worst Sox starters of the group over the past week.

Perhaps even more importantly, he needs to do it for the Sox to have a shot at the Series. Like it or not, more of Boston’s success than any other team’s relies on it’s starting pitching. Dice-K is - at worst - the No. 3 pitcher in that rotation, so he’ll need a lot of innings, wins and dominance for the Red Sox to repeat 2004.

Tonight in Baltimore would be a good time for him to start.

– Cameron Smith