What to Expect from Clay Buchholz

I just got back from a weekend in Arizona, watching some Arizona Fall League games and attending First Pitch Arizona, a fantasy baseball seminar. Unfortunately, the Sox’ best prospect in the AFL, Will Middlebrooks, had been taken out of action due to an injury. Still, the weekend wasn’t without at least a little Red Sox discussion.

After hearing panel discussions, talking to other fantasy baseball fans and then looking at some insanely early average draft position data, I had this feeling the Clay Buchholz is being almost forgoten. Buchholz became a huge fantasy value in 2010 when he went 17-7 with a 2.33 ERA. He was pegged for regression in 2011 by this very site, but in that same article Chip wrote, “I don’t see him overtaking Lester as the ace of the staff, but I can certainly see him as a very strong number two starter for years to come.”

Buchholz started out horribly this past April, posting a 5.33 ERA with a disgusting 15/16 K/BB rate and six home runs allowed in 27 innings. The home runs in particular seemed to be a huge source of luck for Clay in 2010, as he had allowed a very small HR/FB rate of 5.6 percent. He had allowed six home runs in the first month of 2011 after allowing a total of nine home runs in 173.2 innings the season before. After April, however, Buchholz buckled down and found his control. He went on to post a 3.56 xFIP in May and a 3.65 xFIP in June before landing on the DL.

Unfortunately, his back injury cost him the rest of the season, though there were some whispers that he could have pitched out of the pen over the final days of the season. That never happened and his season numbers ended at 6-3 with a 3.48 ERA, 4.28 xFIP and 1.9 K/BB rate. His sample size of only 82.2 innings is a bit to small to draw concrete conclusions from, but he did end up with a rather low .264 BABIP, which was almost identical to the one he posted in 2010 (.261)

Also nearly identical were his K/9 and BB/9 numbers.

2010: 6.2 K/9, 3.5 BB/9

2011: 6.5 K/9, 3.4 BB/9

At age 27, there is still some room for him to improve his K/BB rate, but he has now thrown 447 career major league innings and has a 3.7 BB/9 to show for it.

The control numbers aren’t as big a concern for me as the strikeout rate is. His career strikeout rate is below average and makes his results very reliant upon his BABIP. While said BABIP has been held well below expected levels (.290-.300 would be average), there’s no way to predict a similar outcome in BABIP going forward.

If his K/BB rate stays the same, I’d expect a ceiling of a 3.50 ERA and a floor of and ERA in the low fours.

As for his injury, I’ll give way to an expert. Sports Illustrated’s injury expert, Will Carroll, wrote this about Buchholz in early August…