"Pretty much since the day he arrived in 2007, Daisuke Matsuzaka has taken the notion of inconsistency and raised it to an art form.

Dice-K can have a stifling effect on an opposing lineup with his baffling array of pitches when he is on his game. And when he is off, an opposing lineup can either wait to draw a walk or pounce on subpar pitches.

In his second start of the spring yesterday, Matsuzaka was off. He wrecked the foundation from his decent first start with a crude second outing.

Hit hard by the Marlins — six hits, seven runs, five earned, two walks, one home run, one strikeout — Matsuzaka earned the loss in the 11-2 Marlins victory.

Rather than dwell on the results, Matsuzaka explained that since it was spring training, he was working on refining his off-speed pitches most of the day.

What looked like a rough outing was not the point, not in early March at least.

"It's pretty obvious what I wanted to do today and it's always ideal to get both results and what I want to do,'' said Matsuzaka. "At the same time, this time it wasn't going that way. Personally, I don't care about the results today because I was doing something I wanted to do."

Matsuzaka almost escaped the first inning with a 1-2-3 start, but second baseman Dustin Pedroia's throw to second to begin a double play was off target, leaving runners on the corners with one out. A two-run double by Gaby Sanchez brought in the two runs. One strikeout later, Josh Kroeger poked a seeing-eye single into right field for another run.

In the second with two outs, Matsuzaka hung a breaking ball that Dewayne Wise pulled a long way over the right field bleachers for another two runs."