Red Sox’s Matsuzaka takes playoff results extra hard

CLEVELAND -- For an hour after Game 3 on Monday night, Daisuke Matsuzaka remained in his Red Sox uniform, sitting at his locker, either staring straight ahead or covering his face with his hand. Yes, you could say the Japanese right-hander took Boston’s 4-2 loss to Cleveland hard.

“I feel bad for him,” reliever Mike Timlin said after the game. “I think he’s putting a little too much pressure on himself.”

Matsuzaka seems to have carried the weight of an entire nation and of Boston’s $103-million investment in him into the postseason, and it shows.

In two starts against the Angels and Indians, Matsuzaka has given up seven earned runs and 13 hits in 9 1/3 innings, striking out nine and walking five, and he failed to finish five innings in both games, a no-decision and a loss. His command is off, he’s falling behind in counts and he needed 200 pitches to record 28 outs.

“There’s a learning process, but he’s not foreign to pressure situations or playoff games,” Timlin said before Game 4 on Tuesday. “I don’t want to think for him or put words in his mouth, but maybe he’s doing too much with his thought process instead of letting his talent go through.”

It’s clear Matsuzaka feels he’s letting his team down. The Red Sox need him to snap out of this funk if he is to pitch Game 7 if the series goes that far.

“When the time is right, we’ll say something to him,” Timlin said. “I know you guys are worried about Dice-K. We’re not. This is a 30-member family here, and when a guy falls down, you pick him up.”

But doesn’t the language barrier make it tougher to console a teammate such as Matsuzaka?

“Hey, baseball is baseball, in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, South Florida, Minnesota, wherever,” Timlin said. “We speak baseball, and we’ll have to find a way to pick him up. We have two interpreters in here. We’re all right.”

There was no team meeting, no inner-office memo from above.

But something clicked Saturday night in the Cleveland pitching staff, which issued 13 walks in its first 12 American League Championship Series innings and three in the next 16 innings, from the fifth inning of Game 2 through Game 3.

The worst offenders? Co-aces C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona, who combined for 10 walks in 8 1/3 innings of Games 1 and 2.

“They had extra rest, they were thrown off their routine, and they weren’t as sharp,” reliever Tom Mastny said before Game 4. Throwing strikes “is a matter of trusting your stuff instead of trying to be fine with it.

“Throw it at home plate, and whatever happens, happens. The first two games, we walked guys. I don’t know if it was a fluke, nerves, rust, but what we did the last 15 to 20 innings is what we’ve done all year.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com