FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) – Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, a devotee of the statistical approach to baseball, doesn’t need a laptop to calculate the number of Japanese media organizations that interviewed him during spring training.

“If you let me go upstairs, I can tell you almost exactly,” he said Thursday in Boston’s dugout, “because I get a bottle of sake for every one. Count the bottles of sake.”

And, he added, “they’re all full.”

Before Boston’s final Grapefruit League game, a 3-3 tie with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Epstein discussed Daisuke Matsuzaka, the rookie pitching star from Japan, and players whose exhibition game performances weren’t as good.

Matsuzaka has a 2.04 ERA with one game left, a brief tuneup on Saturday in Philadelphia, before his first regular-season start next Thursday in Kansas City. Reliever Hideki Okajima has a 2.84 ERA in 10 appearances.

“I’m very happy with the transition process,” Epstein said. “The rest of our players deserve credit for taking something that could have been a distraction and turning it into a positive.”

The lack of distractions didn’t help captain Jason Varitek or rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia. Varitek is 4-for-39 (.103) and Pedroia is 12-for-57 (.211). Varitek turns 35 on April 11 and is coming off a career-low .238 batting average.

But Epstein said the catcher rarely hits well in spring training.

In 2003, Varitek had “a pretty feeble spring from an offensive standpoint,” Epstein said, but hit a liner off the wall in the season opener and “got locked in right after that.”

Pedroia, 23, hit .191 in 31 games with Boston last season and is now the regular second baseman.

“I think for him the light’s going to go on one day when he can just relax and be himself,” Epstein said. “What you saw last year was a guy pressing, trying to do too much, and that’s pretty characteristic of young players and that can sometimes carry over into the second year a little bit.”

The Red Sox appear to have an outstanding rotation headed by Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett and Matsuzaka.

“On paper, it’s got as high a ceiling as any rotation that we’ve had,” said Epstein, who became general manager in 2003.

The return of Jonathan Papelbon last week to the closer’s role in which he excelled last year eliminates one question mark. That makes the bullpen less of a concern.

“I think now our attentions are spread equally throughout the whole club and health,” Epstein said.

He knows what he has and said he doesn’t expect any changes before the season starts on Monday.

“There’s always the possibility of some sort of roster maneuvering. Other teams are trying to sneak good players through waivers this time of year,” he said, “but I wouldn’t expect anything.”

AP-ES-03-29-07 1957EDT