"As much as Daisuke Matsuzaka tried to fight through the stiffness in his right elbow, he couldn't disguise his body's warning sent to manager Terry Francona in the Red Sox dugout.

"We watched him in between innings and it looked like he was stretching out his arm in between innings, so we were keeping an eye on him,'' Francona said.

When Matsuzaka gave up a leadoff single to Ichiro Suzuki in the fifth, Francona saw all he needed to see.

He immediately rushed from the dugout with trainer Mike Reinold and assistant trainer Masai Takahashi, who served as interpreter on the mound with the manager, pitcher, and catcher Jason Varitek.

When Francona heard the words "stiff'' and "elbow,'' there was no need for any further translation to make the decision to pull Matsuzaka in last night's 5-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners before a Fenway Park crowd of 37,845.

"He went out and his velocity looked like it dropped pretty significantly so we made the trip to the mound,'' Francona said. "He just said it was stiff. He didn't put up a fight.''

When asked if he had any concerns about his elbow, Matsuzaka said through an interpreter, "I have an idea of what's going on with my elbow right now, so I'm not worried too much about it.''"