It has become popular sport for New Englanders to throw their hands in the air and pronounce how absurd it is to try to predict what will happen with the mysterious Daisuke Matsuzaka. His performance on Monday night will do little to silence those who have already given up on him.

Yet as Matsuzaka (7-3, 4.29) demonstrated in leading the Red Sox to a crucial 2-1 victory over the Athletics (recap), he is capable of being as good as just about any starter on the Red Sox in stretches. And right now, he is amidst a run that has made him a key component to his team’s hopes of remaining in the playoff hunt even while the lineup is decimated by injuries.

The right-hander turned in one of the most startlingly efficient outings of his career. A pitcher infamous for his painfully high pitch counts simply mowed down the Athletics, employing an explosive 93-94 mph fastball with late movement, a cutter that gave left-handers fits for most of the night and a tight slider with nasty late break.

“There was a lot of power to his pitches and he was down when he wanted to be,” Sox manager Terry Francona told reporters in Oakland. “He misfired a couple of times but that was pretty good stuff.”

The result of that combination was one of Matsuzaka’s most important wins as a member of the Red Sox. He was nearly unhittable save for a solo homer allowed in the third inning, turning in 6 2/3 innings and allowing just one run on two hits while issuing two walks and striking out six. Aside from the homer, he did not allow a single runner past first base through the first six innings.

Perhaps the most surprising element of Matsuzaka’s night was its brevity. He threw just 89 pitches in sailing through his outing, one start after he needed only 88 pitches to log six innings in his final start of the first half. He fired first-pitch strikes to 19 of the first 21 batters he faced, proving relentless in his attack against the A’s.

“This is the type of pitching I really want to continue to do as the season goes on," Matsuzaka told reporters through translator Masa Hoshino.

Whether he can do so is an open question. But there is no doubt that he will have the opportunity to do so.

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In his last nine starts dating to May 22, Matsuzaka is now 5-2 with a 2.89 ERA. In that run, the right-hander has worked around his usual mind-jarring number of walks (4.5 per nine innings) while striking out 7.4 batters per nine innings and permitting opponents just a .206 batting average.

Among Sox pitchers, only Jon Lester (7-2, 2.24) has been more effective during this stretch. With Buchholz and Beckett both on the sidelines, Matsuzaka has helped the Sox to maintain formidable rotation depth. 

Matsuzaka has been an afterthought for much of the season, with conversation about the Sox rotation focusing primarily first on the Big Three of Beckett, Lester and John Lackey, and then on the emergence of Clay Buchholz. But the 29-year-old represents an X-factor who can be as good as -- and sometimes better than -- any of those peers. Certainly, of late, he has emerged as a pitcher of immense importance to his club.

In particular, in his last two outings, Matsuzaka has been overpowering from the first moment of the game, in part the byproduct of an alteration to his pregame routine in order to address his first-inning struggles. The results have been a pair of key victories in low-scoring games, as Matsuzaka earned the ‘W’ in a 3-2 win over the Blue Jays last week before Monday night’s 2-1 win over the Athletics.

In so doing, a pitcher who has inspired any number of adjectives in his Sox career may be in the midst of earning perhaps the most unexpected label of all: that of a reliable and essential contributor to a starting staff that must carry the Sox through a perilous stretch.