What To Do WIth Clay Buchholz?

Who would trade a top 100 prospect for Clay? I say send him down to AAA until he can get his act together. He is still a better option than Owens or Johnson and will be a good emergency starter when someone gets injured and needs time off.

I don't think it makes sense yet to trade Buchholz. I like the depth they have in the rotation, even if that depth (Buch, Owens, Kelly) is pitching like depth and not a bona-fide starter. The odds are reasonable that one of them will figure it out and contribute, and Wright's performance, last start notwithstanding, affords them the opportunity to sort it all out. As I've said before, they won it all with Buchholz hurt, and Lester and Lackey pitching like solid 2s, not remotely aces, 1As, or even good 2s. Doubront and Dempster were just passable as the 4-5 too. This team looks like they've got as good or better an offense, as good or better defense, and a better bullpen. I'm willing to bet that Price-Porcello will meet or exceed Lester-Lackey. There's little chance they'll get a run like early-'13 Buchholz, but Rodriguez and Wright should reasonably surpass Doubront-Dempster. Keeping Buchholz (for now) has little downside, unless he completely disintegrates. They're winning games and have nearly a 60-positive run differential. Keeping the starters they have means avoiding an Iglesias-Montas for Peavy type deal.

That said, I think people are underrating Buchholz's value to other teams. He's got a cheap contract, great stuff (which he happens to be struggling with), a history of outstanding runs, and he's perfect for a contender who wants a relatively young, playoff-tested veteran with upside who (should they decline his option) only has a guaranteed $10M or so left. That's worth a top-100, maybe more. Lots of teams are struggling to find starters, and even a small market contender can afford Buchholz. That broadens the market and makes a good return more likely.

Maybe we should have traded a ridiculous trade package for Shelby Miller or Sonny Gray, who are just as bad or worse than Buchholz this year. Or maybe you just realize that these pitchers will all improve eventually because they have track records.

Haha! I thought I covered that in detail in the first paragraph!

The Sox would be silly to trade him unless they got the proverbial offer they couldn't refuse. His track record says he'll improve, which either means they have a good #3, or his value in a trade improves. But it makes no sense to me to deal him when there isn't a clear, viable option to take his spot and perform better there than he has/will. But, you know, Nick Cafardo...

Right, I usually think of "ceiling" as the "mojo and true talent" that Clay has already been showing in streaks, in innings 3-7 of nearly every game. 

The issue with Clay is similar to Price: why the hard contact for the first two innings? To the extent the hard contact is not random, it does seem like something they could figure out, as they think they did with Price. 

The theory with Price was that he had a mechanical issue pitching out of the stretch. ericmvan has a theory that Clay actually gives up less hard contact when he pitches to contact and nibbles more. 

Separately, brisox gave us the scoop that the team may feel there is an issue with Clay's attitude, and that, separately, as with the Nomar situation, could be reason for a trade, as you say. 

Humber was a high contact guy who may have had a lot of luck in his perfect game. 

Getting high no-contact and swing-and-miss rates, and first pitch strikes is probably the most valuable skill in all of pitching, and from there, in all of baseball. It's the one thing a pitcher can control, and it correlates very well (inversely) to runs allowed once the pitcher can avoid walks (see kwERA).

When you find that special someone like Clay -- or Espinoza or Owens -- who has that skill, you don't trade them unless you get a king's ransom back.

That's especially true for Clay where you can see that he's given up 19 of his earned runs in the first two innings. Maybe Dutty can watch some tapes, as he did with Price, and figure it out, What is Clay doing differently in the first two innings? 

No, Buchholz is definitely NOT perfect for a playoff contender, he is essentially random as all get out. It is like saying shooting craps is perfect for bringing home a weekly paycheck. His runs of goodness are not predictable: he is good when he is good, and he is bad when he is bad, plus he has a poor medical history.

Buchholz is perfect for the Oakland A's, or any other team that only has an outside chance of competing, a team of long shots, where the only hope is for a perfect storm of best case outcomes. That does not describe this year's Sox. I am probably letting years of frustration with Buchholz cloud my perceptions, but there is not much reason to expect Buchholz to be anything but random.

The Sox don’t, at this point in time, need Buchholz to be golden in order to be successful this year. The have four really good pitchers who would probably slot in front of Buchholz in a playoff rotation. But they do need some level of predictability and innings from the number 5 spot. Might not be Joe Kelly, but he is a better bet to give the team what it needs than Buchholz.

Kelly might be a placeholder for another player to be acquired, but the team needs to see what Kelly has to offer this year. Kelly didn't really get much of a chance before his injury, so why not see if good Joe Kelly is going to show up? Kelly seemed to have figured out some things last year in terms of sequencing and becoming a pitcher, not a thrower, and is likely to benefit greatly from having CV behind the plate.

On the Sox staff, right now, the job of the #5 is to give consistency, eat innings, save the bullpen, and give the team a chance to win most of the time. I would gladly trade out Buchholz uncertain promise for a decent, consistent # 4 (say, I wonder, can we get Wade Miley from Seattle?…….).

If the Sox feel they need to rely on Buchholz (or Kelly) to be anything more than a #5 in the regular season and playoffs, they need to find a different pitcher. And if they decide they are good with the 1-4 of the rotation, then they need something else from the #5 spot: consistent, somewhat decent starts; which could be Kelly. So why not start with looking at Joe Kelly, and see if he can be good enough for a 4/5 spot? In the meantime, put Buchholz on the DL for that pesky calf-strain and see if that helps him get his act together

Would you please quit trying to pick fights with people who have entered the modern era of understanding baseball?

It comes across as you insulting everyone who understands more than RBIs and pitching wins is responsible for every bad decision ever made in baseball because the only way you can ever be right is to ignore stats.

That is a great response. Point taken.

I'm OK with giving him a couple more starts. I'm certainly OK with trading him for a good prospect. I'm also OK with moving him to the bullpen if the rotation gets overcrowded.

Give him 2 more starts (20th & 25th) & see how he does. If he stinks it up, hopefully E Rod is ready to take his spot on the 30th and Buchholz goes on the DL with some kind of phantom injury.

I think Buchholz needs to throw another 20-25 pitches before he comes out for the 1st inning. He doesn't look warmed up enough to me to start the game.

I wouldn't quite say that Buchholz is random-- it's not that he alternates great starts with terrible starts. I'd say he's more streaky-- when his mechanics are locked in and all his pitches are working, he's one of the better pitchers in the league, but when they're not, he's capable of putting up sustained stretches of replacement-level play. It's been hard to predict when those streaks start and stop, but he's definitely shown the ability to switch from cold to hot mid-season. Here's a graph of Buchholz's rolling 15-game stretches of ERA-- you see a stretch of dramatic mid-season improvement in literally every season since 2012.

I also wouldn't confidently say that the Red Sox have four playoff-caliber starters. Price and Porcello, sure, but Rodriguez hasn't thrown a pitch in the majors yet this year and has looked mediocre velocity- and results-wise in Pawtucket, while Wright is still not in my zone of trust yet (I am increasingly confident that he is a major-league-caliber starter, but it's still only been six really good starts and I'm skeptical that he's more than a mid-/back-end rotation option). Despite their very solid start, you already hear the calls for the Red Sox to acquire a number two starter, and I think it's true that their rotation remains their main weakness (along with LF).

Finally, I'm not sure why Kelly inspires any more confidence than Buchholz. He is certainly no bastion of innings or consistency, and as a less-established pitcher with options left, they can stash him in AAA and see how he looks there. Plus, with Owens and Johnson scuffling, Kelly would be the 6th starter and is going to get additional major league opportunities. If you jettison Buchholz and get hit with injuries, you're leaving yourself with one layer less of depth.

In light of the above, I'm inclined to give Buchholz the chance to try and work out of this. If he doesn't look any better by mid-June and/or Kelly looks good in Pawtucket, I'm fine reassessing. But if you get rid of Buchholz now, I think you're just overreacting based on frustration.