During last night’s gem-like pitching performance by Daisuke Matsuzaka, the TBS broadcasting crew shared some startling statistics about the Red Sox starter. Honestly, I thought I heard wrong about Dice-K’s batting average against in the following scenarios during the regular season:

* When he fell behind 2-0, batters ended up hitting .125

* When he fell behind 3-1, batters hit .118.

Hearing this, I made the obvious conclusion that he probably ended up walking most of those batters. Further digging at Baseball-Reference.com tells me otherwise: The 16 times he fell behind 2-0 (doesn’t that seem like a low total?), Dice-K didn’t walk a single batter all season. That’s pretty amazing. The 50 times he fell behind 3-1, he only allowed two hits — both singles — while walking the batter 32 times (and hitting one batter).

So he basically never gives in to the hitter.

All season long, people (myself included) have been knocking Dice-K about his "wildness." After all, he led the American League in walks. But what’s remarkable is that he pitches better with men on base. His BAA against with the bases empty? .225. His BAA with men on base? .193.

Here’s another stat that caught my eye: With the bases empty, batters hit .289 against Dice-K when they put the ball in play. With men on base, that average drops to .225. Is that solely the product of luck? Or is he better at keeping batters from squaring up the ball when runners are on base? (Jon Lester’s BAPIP is .298 with the bases empty; it’s .303 with runners on).

Bottomline: I’m not going to get heart palpitations when Dice-K walks batters this postseason. In fact, I’d prefer him to start out 2-0 on every single batter, then go from there.