The Boston Red Sox don’t have an ace starting pitcher. I’ve said it. Chances are you’ve probably said it as well. It’s been the consensus since, well, ever.
Clay Buchholz, however, begs to differ.
Buchholz made his 16th start of 2015 on Monday night against the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre, and it went quite well. In pacing the Red Sox to a 3-1 victory, Buchholz allowed just one run on five hits in eight innings. He struck out five and walked nobody. MLB.com’s official Twitter feed highlighted his stats:
Now, the downside is that this victory only pushed Boston’s record to 35-43. The Red Sox are still a bad team, and the main reason for that is still their starting pitching. With a 4.71 ERA, Red Sox starters rank last in the American League.
But don’t look at that and then point your wagging finger at Buchholz. He’s doing his part to bring that number down, and in general he has been pitching better than you might think.
In 10 starts dating back to May 10, Buchholz has racked up a 2.33 ERA and 4.31 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 69.2 innings. In doing so, he’s dropped his ERA from 6.03 to 3.48.
To be sure, an ERA like that doesn’t exactly jump off the page. But if you turn to the know-it-all geek stats at FanGraphs—those being FIP, xFIP and SIERA—they’ll tell you that Buchholz actually deserves an ERA that would put him among the American League’s 10 best pitchers:
The message here is that Buchholz has pitched better than his ERA indicates. And regarding that opinion, you don’t need to take it from a bunch of acronyms that look like they belong on a graphing calculator.
For one, there’s the fact that Buchholz’s ERA for the season would be 2.76 if you were to remove his early-season clunker (nine earned runs in 3.1 innings) at Yankee Stadium. Beyond that, there’s the fact that his 4.17 K/BB ratio is easily the best of his career. Even further beyond that, there’s the fact that he entered Monday’s start with a career-low 23.6 hard-hit rate.
In so many words: Buchholz’s season has been fantastic outside of a single bad start, and that makes sense in light of how he’s racking up strikeouts and limiting both walks and hard contact.
This, certainly, doesn’t sound anything like the enigma that Buchholz has so often been over the years. It almost sounds like he’s become a good pitcher.
Which, wouldn’t you know it, appears to be the case.
In fairness, the dominance Buchholz has flashed this season isn’t totally out of left field. The 30-year-old right-hander made a run at the American League Cy Young Award with a 2.33 ERA in 2010, and seemed to hit a peak with a 1.71 ERA through his first dozen starts of 2013 before injuries waylaid his season.
Ask the man himself, though, and he’ll say he’s pitching even better now than he was in the early portion of ’13. That’s what Alex Speier of the Boston Globe got out of him, anyway:
Speier has a full article in which Buchholz elaborated on the differences between 2015 and 2013, with the main and most important one being that he feels like he has complete control over his arsenal of pitches.
In Buchholz’s words:
I look back at 2013, there were a couple games where I had all my pitches working but I worked off fastball command and might have had a changeup that day or my curveball. But very rarely did I have all four or five working that day. It just doesn’t happen that often.
The last couple times out, I’ve had a really good feel for a strike curveball and a curveball I can throw in the dirt. Same thing with the changeup. I actually feel like I’m throwing a little better now than I did then in terms of having a feel for each pitch.
It’s admittedly not that easy to take all this and confirm it with numbers, but some things do check out.
Courtesy of Brooks Baseball, Buchholz entered Monday throwing his four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curveball and changeup at least 14.8 percent of the time. That’s about as true of a five-pitch pitcher as a guy can be.
And yet, such a complex arsenal hasn’t negatively impacted Buchholz’s command. He went into Monday’s start throwing 48.1 percent of his pitches in the strike zone. That’s above his career rate of 45.5 percent and easily better than the rate of 42.5 percent he posted in 2013.
According to Baseball Savant, this is partially owed to the fact that 11.6 percent of Buchholz’s pitches are changeups and curveballs in the strike zone. That’s the highest rate he’s done that since 2011.
From here, there are more complicated roads we can go down. But the gist that Buchholz has very good command of a true five-pitch mix is not one that should be shrugged off with a “Great story, man.” There aren’t many pitchers who can say as much, and there’s probably no shortage of hitters who would tell you that five pitches plus command does not equal a comfortable at-bat.
But the single-biggest reason for Buchholz’s success this season? That might be his new-look changeup.
One thing Buchholz’s changeup has always had going for it is good velocity separation from that of his heater. And that’s still the case. He’s averaging 92 mph with his four-seamer and sinker this year and 80 mph with his changeup. That’s a difference of 12 mph, which is plenty to get a hitter out on his front foot.
But what Buchholz’s changeup has now that it didn’t before is lots of lateral movement. Eno Sarris of FanGraphs highlighted that in late May, and we can see it illustrated in this graph from Brooks Baseball:
See that big drop? That’s a changeup that once had very little arm-side run suddenly gaining a lot of it. Sarris has some GIFs that show it in action. So does Nick Pollack at PitcherList.com, who wrote that Buchholz’s changeup is his “best pitch and one that will keep the strikeouts alive.”
And he’s right about that. Entering Monday, Brooks Baseball says Buchholz’s changeup had accounted for 29 of his 91 strikeouts, easily the most of any of his pitches. Also, hitters were batting just .114 against it. Per Baseball Prospectus, that was the third-best mark among all changeups thrown by all starters.
So, Buchholz isn’t just a starter with very good command of a legit five-pitch mix. He’s that and a guy with one elite out pitch. That, friends, is a dangerous pitcher.
And all this, of course, helps explain why he’s suddenly in demand.
Whether the struggling Red Sox should trade Buchholz or keep him was the subject of Speier’s article. And according to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe, pitching-needy teams have their eyes on Buchholz. Rightfully so, as he comes with both talent and two more years of club control after 2015.
You have to think, however, that the Red Sox won’t deal Buchholz unless they’re really sure they’re out of the race. And if he keeps pitching like this, that’s a call they may not have to make.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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