Okay kids, let’s practice. Dice-Kay Mat-su-za-ka. Can everybody say it? Dice-kay, not Di-su-ke. Are we good? Good. 

 Daisuke Matsuzaka may well be the newest Boston Red Sox offseason-addition, but his name is also the one most worth knowing how to say.  

No, not because it’s more difficult to pronounce than J.D. Drew or Julio Lugo, but because according to those who have seen him - he’s got the stuff right now to be Boston’s ace.   

My take on this whole situation is that he’d better. He had better win a lot of games, dominate Major League Baseball, and be Bean Town’s most valuable pitcher. 

If he isn’t all of those things and if he isn’t an all-star caliber starter and an ace-type pitcher by season’s end, than adding him was a waste of money. 

This guy was the biggest star in Japan since Hideki Matsui. I get that having him on your team can allow you to make money overseas by installing baseball camps and programs if you’re the Red Sox. 

But that doesn’t put the Triscuit crackers in my stomach. I want to see production on the mound, in this country, and I want to see Daisuke win games. And lots of them. 

You can do a lot with $103 million, the amount Boston spent to land the deceptive right-hander. You see, they paid Matsuzaka’s former employer back in Japan $51 million just for the right to negotiate with the stud starter. 

Then the two parties, the Red Sox and the 26-year-old pitcher, agreed on a contract that will pay Matsuzaka $52 million to play in Boston. This isn’t monopoly folks - that is a lot of cash to pay a guy, who it should be noted has never thrown a pitch in the major-leagues. 

I don’t want to get too far off topic here, but what name is he going to wear on the back of his jersey anyway? Will he go by Daisuke, in the same way Ichiro Suzuki became famous enough to drop his last name? 

Or will he follow the route of Matsui, the New York Yankees outfielder who still wears his last name on the back of his uniform? I digress. 

Adding a pitcher of Matsuzaka’s caliber is a monumental upgrade to an already stacked rotation. I get that. But while I’ve never professed to be Bob Barker, I just don’t know if the price is right. 

The Red Sox could have added Barry Zito (a former Cy Young award winner) and Jason Schmidt, two proven veteran starters, for less than they spent on Daisuke. Or should I have said Matsuzaka? 

But they didn’t.  

They could have bought the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or 4-million packs of juicy fruit or something. But they didn’t do that either. 

Instead they got their man from Japan, and I don’t think they should have. Not at this price