FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Saturday afternoon, in brilliant sunshine on one of six mounds on a practice field outside of JetBlue Park, Daisuke Matsuzaka threw 20 pitches, sat down for a few minutes to simulate the middle of an inning, then threw 20 more.

It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He never showed anything but an expressionless game face.

But after the session, pitching coach Bob McClure raved.

“It’s hard to tell he was ever even hurt, from the way he’s throwing the baseball right now,” McClure said of Matsuzaka, who underwent Tommy John surgery in June after pitching in just eight games in the 2011 season. “That doesn’t mean he’s ready, by no means. I’m just saying it’s free and easy. It’s coming out of his hand really good. It’s clean. Looks sharp. Looks like he’s on schedule.”

Matsuzaka said earlier in camp that he would not give a date for his return, but suggested that it will be before the generally anticipated time -- the All-Star break. McClure said he’s encouraged, but that no attempt will be made to meet any timetable.

“Because of the surgery, you don’t want to rush it,” he said. “He may look better than he would actually if we moved him up to pitch, because when you watch him right now, it looks like he could pitch in a game.

“But it’s not the right thing to do. You just don’t want to go backwards. He’s worked too hard to put a lot of time into this going forward, so we don’t want to make any steps going backwards.”

McClure said the plan is to throw a few more of these 40-pitch sessions, then three to four batting-practice sessions, and after that “it’s all going to depend on how he’s feeling and what the doctors say.”

McClure said he and assistant pitching coach Randy Niemann are working on mechanical issues to get Matsuzaka’s body in the right position so he doesn’t suffer another injury. He believes Matsuzaka developed a bad habit during his rehab of throwing with his glove away from his body and his head jerking away, creating pressure on his arm.

“When he’s on the mound, he’s trying to get more compact,” he said. “Today, he did a lot of it really good. He feels so good he’ll overthrow the baseball. When he goes to throw it, his head will jerk out and his glove will go sideways and the ball will shoot away, which also puts more stress on his arm. But he usually gets back into it.

“When you get fatigued -- it might be in a game or at a point during a month -- you’re doing anything you can to get the guy out. You can’t think about mechanics when you’re competing, so sometimes you get a little out of whack. If he can stay within himself and use the body to propel the ball with his arm, he’s better off.”

McClure said Matsuzaka, 31, was told about this flaw as a young pitcher in Japan.

“It’s something he’s always battled,” he said. “It takes a lot of reps to do it right. But he feels it when he does it right and he feels it when he does it wrong. We want to get to where it’s muscle memory and he doesn’t have to think about it because you cannot pitch that way. You can change muscle memory, but it takes hundreds and hundreds of reps the right way. That’s the only way.”