Before yesterday, Daisuke Matsuzaka was more a legend than a man. The Boston Red Sox had paid $51 million simply for the privilege of negotiating with the 26-year-old’s agent. Tales were told of how he didn’t ice down his arm after throwing 160 pitches. He was rumored to throw three varieties of a mysterious pitch called the gyroball, never before seen on our American shores. He seemed more like an attraction out of a 19th-century carnival than an actual pitcher with mundane concerns like wind directions, the height of pitching mounds, and umpire tendencies.

As soon as he stepped foot on the mound at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium, though, Matsuzaka was merely one of baseball’s hundreds of pitchers, to be judged by entirely normal criteria. There was probably no way he could live up to all the carny barking that greeted his arrival in the American Major Leagues — facing a Royals lineup consisting of youngsters, rookies, and minor league veterans, anything short of a no-hitter would be dismissed as the manhandling of a crippled lineup. Still, the results told a story: For seven innings, pitched entirely under the pressure of never leading by more than two runs, the circus freak struck out 10, walked one, and gave up one run. If that wasn’t perfect, it was close enough.

Always more interesting than what a pitcher does, though, is how exactly he does it. Watching footage of his Japanese career this winter, I was struck by how his slight frame, compact windup, whipping delivery, and darting, accurate pitches recalled David Cone in his younger days. His vast repertoire of pitches and renowned pitching intelligence recalled the tales told of Orlando Hernandez when he first arrived from Cuba. Others noted concrete resemblances to Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux.

It’s probably not fair to make comparisons between Matsuzaka and several great pitchers, two of whom rank among the best of all time, but on evidence of his first start, what’s amazing is that there’s something to them.

The first thing we learned yesterday is that Matsuzaka’s arsenal is as deep as reputed. He threw a fastball, a slider, a curveball, a changeup, a split-fingered fastball, and an in-between breaking pitch, all effectively. You can parse that further, as he threw a couple of different fastballs (one an El Duque-like eephus pitch that simply floated in at 80 but was distinct from his changeup), two different sliders (one, a tight backdoor slider, looked a lot like the famed gyroball), and maintained two different breaks on his curveball. He didn’t rely on any one of these in particular; he threw his fastball about half the time and relied on the slider more heavily than any other off-speed or breaking pitch, but none were thrown for show or to keep hitters unbalanced. In this, the comparisons to Cone and Hernandez are spot-on.

His best pitch yesterday was probably the fastball. Coming in between 92 and 94, it’s hard but not notably so. What is impressive is his complete control of it, and its skittery, heavy, late movement. It was reminiscent of the fastball Maddux threw in his prime, with a wider late break. A pitcher with just that fastball and a good changeup can be very effective; as one of nine pitches, it’s devastating. His worst pitch looked to be his straight changeup. All afternoon, though, he only threw two balls that were hit squarely, one a 91 mph fastball that went for a home run and the other an 80 mph change that went for a double. That speaks well for all of his pitches.

In his delivery Matsuzaka does resemble Cone — he hesitates, draws himself in and just whips the ball — but as MLB.com’s Will Carroll demonstrated with a sideby-side video comparison, he resembles Clemens even more. It’s a perfect, Tom Seaver-type delivery, one that uses the legs rather than the arm to drive the ball, and it kept him strong through seven. Matsuzaka looked a bit nervous in the first, and a bit fatigued in the sixth, but he finished up strong and never lost velocity. Nothing he did yesterday discouraged anyone from thinking of him as a horse.

The most notable thing about Matsuzaka’s game, though, was the sheer variety of approaches he took. In Mark Teahan’s second at bat, for instance, the third in a sequence that saw Matsuzaka strike out four of five hitters, he started him off with two sliders at the same high-70s speed, one low and inside and one over the middle. He then threw two fastballs inside, one at 86 and one at 93, before going to an 85 mph splitter inside and then a low, 79 mph curveball to finish him off. Teahan is a good hitter, but he looked bewildered; Matsuzaka was changing his eye level, moving over both sides of the plate, and not only changing speeds in three registers but throwing straight and crooked pitches at the same speed. An even more perfect sequence in the seventh saw him start off Ross Gload with a 78 mph change, an 83 mph split, and a 93 mph fastball, the first two down and away, the third inside. Not everything was complex, though: He threw Ryan Shealy five straight fastballs at one point, and he threw Tony Pena Jr. six. He deliberately bounced balls wide and short of the plate; he threw up and in just as often. The sheer variety of the pitches and sequences called to mind maybe the best pitcher of them all: Pedro Martinez.

Matsuzaka didn’t look to be without his weaknesses. His stuff is very good, but it’s not electric — he doesn’t look to have any pitch that’s simply impossible to drive, as Martinez did at one time in his career. He also wasted a lot of pitches and didn’t work quickly. As complex as his patterns were, I think the Yankees, with their extraordinary patience, are perfectly suited to handle this sort of pitcher — something that makes sense if one thinks of the fits they gave Martinez in his prime. No matter how cerebral the pitcher, it’s just exhausting to work through a lineup in which no one is falling for your usual tricks.

Still, the news yesterday was that, so far as one can tell from a single game against a green lineup, the carny barking wasn’t all that exaggerated. I’m pretty sure that Minnesota’s Johan Santana is better than the pitcher I watched yesterday; other than him, I wouldn’t be sure about anyone in baseball. It’s a long season, and people with sharper eyes than I were watching Matsuzaka yesterday; I’m sure he’ll have some adjustments to make as the league catches to some of his tactics. You can, though, absolutely believe the hype.

tmarchman@nysun.com