Kuroda unsure at first, but Martin catches on

When Hiroki Kuroda makes his major league debut tonight in the opening game of the Dodgers’ three-game series in San Diego, he’ll take the mound no longer worried about the one major on-field concern he had when coming over the Pacific Ocean.

The source of his calm: Russell Martin.

“I feel blessed that I have a very good catcher,” the 33-year old Kuroda said. “He really thinks and leads me.”

By and large, big league catchers are perceived by Japanese players to be technically sloppy and mentally lazy, insensitive to the strengths of their pitchers and making little effort to read the minds of opposing hitters.

The fear of being caught by someone like that prompted Kuroda to ask closer Takashi Saito about the Dodgers’ catcher when they met in November in Japan. Leading up to his signing of a three-year, $35.3-million contract in mid-December, Kuroda spoke to Saito a few more times over the phone to inquire about Martin.

Saito assured him that he and Martin would work well together, adding that he once had the same skepticism.

“When I started playing with Russell, I stopped thinking that way,” Saito said. “I will never again say that American catchers are inferior.”

Martin laughed when relayed the story.

“I’m Canadian, that’s why,” he said.

Dodgers Manager Joe Torre said that early in spring training, he was approached by Martin, who told him that he wanted to catch Kuroda in the exhibition season as much as possible. Torre obliged, playing Martin in Kuroda’s last six starts of the spring.

Torre said that Kuroda looked his best in his last two outings, something the manager credited to Martin’s learning of what makes Kuroda comfortable and, by extension, the kind of game to call when he’s on the mound.

“Russell’s going to work at it,” Torre said. “Russell’s not one of those catchers who says, ‘You’re going to throw what I tell you.’”

So much so that when Martin noticed early on that Kuroda never shook him off, he instructed him to do so. The practice is a foreign concept in Japan, where pitchers throw whatever catchers tell them.

“‘Feel free to shake me off because that’s the only way I’m going to learn,” Martin recalled telling Kuroda. And when Kuroda did, Martin said, “I was like, ‘OK, that’s what he likes to do in this situation.’ ”

Martin and Kuroda both point to his second-to-last start of the exhibition season March 25 against Kansas City as their turning point as a battery.

Kuroda’s statistics didn’t reflect how he felt in that game -- he gave up three runs in 5 2/3 innings -- but they did in his final start of the spring Sunday, when he struck out six Boston Red Sox in four hitless innings in his Dodger Stadium debut.

Kuroda was particularly pleased with how Martin called for his sliders and two-seam fastballs on the inside part of the plate when facing left-handed hitters, which is in line with his own preferred method of attack.

“He calls for the right pitches at the right time,” Kuroda said. “He really pulls me along.”

However much Kuroda and Martin’s communication has improved, it has remained mostly non-verbal.

Kuroda received daily 30-minute English lessons from translator Kenji Nimura in the spring and continues to study 15 minutes a day, but he’s admittedly a long way from being able to hold a conversation. Nimura, who was hired by the Dodgers as a condition of Kuroda’s signing, serves as a bridge between Kuroda and Martin and pregame planning sessions.

When camp opened, Kuroda said he was nervous about the prospect of being visited on the mound by Martin during a game without Nimura nearby. That fear has also subsided, in part because of a conversation he had on a plane with Martin and Nimura when the Dodgers moved their spring training base from Florida to Arizona.

Martin taught Kuroda several English phrases he might use when they face jams, among them, “Keep the ball down,” “Stay calm,” “That guy’s got speed,” and “Mix your hold times.”

And in the couple of times Martin visited him on the mound this spring, Kuroda said he realized that what’s said in those meetings in the big leagues doesn’t differ much from what’s said in Japan.

“We speak the language of baseball,” Martin said. “As long as you understand what a one or a two or a three or a four [fingers] is, we’re going to be on the same page. We don’t really need to converse about anything except really simple baseball stuff. Baseball’s pretty simple, man. It’s not like we’re going to talk about history.”

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DODGERS AT SAN DIEGO

Today, 7 p.m., Ch. 9

Saturday, 12:45 p.m., Ch. 11

Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 9