Forget for a moment the Tilt-A-Whirl that is a season of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s starts.

By now, the pattern -- or lack thereof -- is familiar. Every start can be dizzyingly different. That lesson was reinforced in dramatic fashion on Wednesday night in the Red Sox’ 6-4 victory over the Athletics (recap). Just five days removed from having walked eight and struck out one in 4 2/3 frames, Matsuzaka allowed three runs in 6 2/3 innings, struck out seven and did not issue a single walk.

That Jekyll-and-Hyde persona, in some ways, was less material than the one trait that has run through all of the pitcher’s starts. Physically, he is in perhaps the best shape of his Red Sox career. Certainly, he is a world removed from where he has been in each of the past two years.

In June 2009, he went on the disabled list and was banished to Fort Myers to recondition completely in hopes that something could be salvaged of a season in which he was injured from the time he arrived in spring training following the World Baseball Classic.

In 2008, he missed the first three weeks of June. Again, the issue was his physical condition and the need to build strength and improve his overall fitness in order to avoid a potential arm or shoulder injury.

But now, Matsuzaka is showing explosive stuff. The 13 swings and misses that he elicited on Wednesday while firing fastballs at 92-94 mph offered unquestionable evidence of that fact. And the pitcher himself offered this succinct evaluation.

“When I was pitching last year, I was a little bit anxious about getting injured,” said Matsuzaka. “But this year, I don’t have anxiety at all. I don’t feel any discomfort.”

Right now, he has the arsenal of a power pitcher. It is simply a matter of harnessing it.

He is capable of elevating or sinking his fastball. The life on his slider is tremendous. He has the necessary arm speed to sell his changeup in compelling fashion. That combination has not resulted in consistent dominance. But, based on stuff alone, that is something of which he is capable.

“[The life on his pitches on Wednesday was] consistent with what he’s shown pretty much in every start. It’s not been a matter of stuff. It’s been a matter of stuff in the strike zone,” said pitching coach John Farrell. “But there are times when he feels or when he shows and pitches with that type of confidence, the life through the zone becomes a little bit more where he’s not muscling up or trying to overthrow. I think he was pretty much confident in any pitch he would go to tonight that he could throw it over the plate.”

After Matsuzaka matched a career high by walking eight Royals last Thursday (on a night when he allowed only two hits), he made a concerted decision to attack the Athletics. This was less a reflection of a gameplan for a specific lineup than it was a philosophical commitment to the idea that he needed to attack his opponent.

“I was thinking during my previous outing, that if I’m going to give up all those walks, I’m better off just trying to let them hit it,” said Matsuzaka. “Considering what happened in my last outing, yes I wanted to be more aggressive about throwing strikes.”

On that front, it was mission accomplished -- in a pattern unlike anything that the Sox had ever seen from the pitcher.

Matsuzaka ended up throwing 109 pitches. A startling 84 of them (77 percent) were strikes. That was far and away the highest strike percentage of Matsuzaka’s career.

In fact, prior to Wednesday, he had just two games as a member of the Sox in which he threw 70 percent strikes. One was an injury-shortened, four-inning outing against the Mariners on May 27, 2008, when he threw 46 of 65 pitches (70.6 percent) for strikes. The other was a 5 1/3 inning outing against the Blue Jays on Sept. 3, 2007, when he threw 69 of 98 (70.4 percent) pitches for strikes.

Of course, his outing on Wednesday wasn’t perfect. The Athletics ambushed him for three runs in the first inning.

“At the beginning of the game -- and I hate to say this – there were almost too many strikes,” said Sox manager Terry Francona. “But if that’s a problem, we’ll take it. ... I don’t think I should ever complain about a guy throwing too many strikes.”

Even so, the inning not only left the Sox on their heels, starting at a three-run deficit. It also continued a yearlong issue of running afoul of the big inning.

Matsuzaka has pitched in parts of 43 innings this year; in five of them (12 percent, second on the team to Josh Beckett) he has permitted at least three runs. Yet he has typically avoided any damage with the exception of the one big inning. In 77 percent of the innings he’s thrown (a mark that is in line with staff leaders Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz), he hasn’t permitted a single run.

All of that suggests that it is not just outing-to-outing when Matsuzaka (who has yet to throw consecutive quality starts this year) is inconsistent. Within each of his games, he has the capacity to do a complete 180, alternately getting hammered and then becoming almost unhittable.

At this point, his teammates view the pitcher’s inconsistency as almost comical. He is, quite simply, unlike just about anyone in the game.

“We call him the Magic Man out in the bullpen. You know it’s in there,” said reliever Daniel Bard. “It’ just a matter of it clicking for him. Sometimes it happens for him at the beginning of an outing. Sometimes it takes him an inning to kind of settle in and find that feeling.”

For Matsuzaka, there was some small satisfaction from this outing, in that he was able to claim a victory. Even so, the right-hander remains anxious to see his results become more predictable.

After his first-inning stumble, he contemplated the effort of teammate John Lackey on Tuesday, when the Sox starter lacked his best stuff but gutted his way through six innings while allowing four runs to claim the win.

Matsuzaka similarly held the game in check, making it into the seventh inning for the third time this year. He claimed the win. But now, he wants more. He wants results that begin to reflect more consistently his tremendous stuff.

“I can’t be satisfied,” said Matsuzaka. “Looking back, just that first inning, and not being able to get through seven full innings, I can’t be satisfied with that. There’s not too much to be satisfied with tonight, except that we got the win.”

In five days, the Sox will once again be confronted with the great unknown when Matsuzaka pitches in Cleveland. Perhaps he will walk the park; perhaps he will be unhittable.

All the same, while that sort of inconsistency can lend itself to something between amusement and frustration, the one common element of Matsuzaka’s performances is important.

For the first time in some time, he is pitching with health and with power. With Josh Beckett out of the rotation for an extended period of time, that development is a significant one for the Sox.

“When he’s on, he’s as dominant as anybody. It’s just a matter of getting him there,” said Bard. “If he can get just a little bit of consistency, and I think he’s starting to find it, I think that makes a huge difference for this team.”