His last name -- Ishii -- looks like a word scramble from the comics section of the newspaper. His full name -- Kazuhisa Ishii -- is impenetrable unless pronounced slowly. Put a baseball in his left hand and things become clear: this guy can pitch. The Dodgers have found their No. 4 starter.

It took about two innings to determine that. The first hitter that Ishii faced in his first spring training in America, Rafael Furcal, struck out on three pitches. Ishii started him with a pitch in, then went away, then came back in. Jim Colborn, the Dodgers' multi-lingual pitching coach, smiled at a teammate and said, in Japanese, "Good morning, good afternoon, good night."

Good start. The next day, Ishii's debut was being discussed by a group of scouts 60 miles away. "I got him at 92 to 94 [mph]," one said. "He's got a good hard curveball, a changeup and he works both sides of the plate -- he's not afraid to go inside. He knows how to pitch. He threw better for me than Hideo Nomo has for the last two years." Last season, Nomo threw a no-hitter, and led the American League in strikeouts (220). "I don't know if there's a better arm on their team," said another scout (what about Kevin Brown?).

Ishii throws two types of curveballs, one of which is more of a slurve, a cross between a slider and a curveball. "One is a hard curveball," said Dodgers hitting coach Jack Clark. Like most Japanese pitchers, Ishii's delivery is slightly unorthodox (though not nearly as funky as Nomo's). He has a noticeable pause once he begins his motion, almost as if he has second-thoughts about throwing the ball to the plate. From the deliberate motion, the ball pops out of his hand, and shoots past the hitter. "He's faster than he looks," says Clark. Indeed. This is not a finesse pitcher.

His second start came on Tuesday. Ishii didn't have the command that he had in his first start, but he gave up only one run and walked only one in three innings against the Expos. He hit 93 mph on the gun, but again showed that sharp breaking ball, and the willingness to pitch inside. Ishii, like most Japanese pitchers, is capable of throwing almost every day -- routinely, Japanese pitchers throw 100 pitches at full speed on the side the day after, say, a 125-pitch start. Brown and Andy Ashby, who are both recovering from offseason arm surgeries, might not be as durable as usual, so the Dodgers are also counting on Ishii to give them innings.

But this is why he came to play here. Ishii speaks broken English, and he says he practices the language "in front of a mirror." His wife, a TV anchor for Japanese TV, speaks fluent English. He understands exactly where he is and what he's doing. It helps that he has Nomo on his team, but the two aren't necessarily close friends. It helps that Colborn, who knew him from scouting and working in Japan, is his pitching coach, but Colborn and Nomo are purposely letting Ishii find his own way, letting his personality come out naturally. But they're always there if he needs help.

"We haven't seen him relax yet," Colborn said. In that respect, he is not like Ichiro, Seattle's brilliant right fielder, who by this time last spring had eased into the Mariners' clubhouse.

Ishii asks questions if he doesn't understand. Minutes before taking the mound for his first start, he wondered why he wasn't allowed to throw warm-up pitches right in front of the dugout. Colborn explained that he could throw plenty of pitches from the mound before the game: in Japan, they're only allowed four warm-up tosses. Ishii wondered why the baseballs in America are so slippery: in Japan, they're rubbed down even more, and easier to grip. But, one good thing about America: you can spit in the dugout. That's not allowed in Japan.

In Japan, Ishii was one of the best pitchers, a power guy who threw four pitches for strikes. He had a tendency to pitch his best when it counted most, such as the postseason. One season, he started out 2-9, but finished 11-10. "He needs challenges," says Colborn. "That's why he's here."

There will be no letdown here, no slow start and then kick it in when he's truly inspired. This is the big leagues and the Dodgers gave him a lot of money (four years, $12.3 million, plus eight roundtrip tickets from Japan to L.A. per year for four years). They're counting on him. Every start, he'll be facing the best hitters in the world.

"And," to quote the great Maxwell Smart, he'll be "loving it."

Tim Kurkjian is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and a regular contributor to Baseball Tonight. E-mail tim.kurkjian@espnmag.com.