Insanity and Clay Buchholz

Make no mistake: Clay Buchholz has been gruelingly awful.

Buchholz has been hopping back and forth over the 6.00 ERA fence for the last few weeks. He’s fallen so precipitously from his heavenly 2013 grace – in which he had a 1.74 ERA/2.74 FIP/3.41 xFIP – that he might have gone straight down to the baseball equivalent of the 8th Circle of Hell. Sure, we knew it was unsustainable, with his .254 BABIP and 83.7% LOB percentage and all, but there was nothing foreseeing this awful of a season. It’s not shocking, but instead horrifying.

So why? Why is Buchholz this terrible? Why can he not just figure it out? Well, it all seems to stem from his resistance to change.

Photo by Kelly O’Connor of sittingstill.smugmug.com

Buchholz has had something of a chronic over-reliance on his fastball. When his command’s on, he’s a more-than-capable level pitcher. However, the Buchholz version we’ve seen has had noticeably spotty command, and when that version is on the mound, he doesn’t exactly like switching to his secondary pitches. Pitches that include a curveball and a changeup. SoxProspects has a poignant description of said curveball & changeup (emphasis my own):

His plus changeup is generally a straight change that sits around 78-82 mph; he also throws a circle-change. His curveball, the best in the organization, sits between 76-81 mph with knee-buckling bite. On any given night, Buchholz’s curve or change can be unhittable, and he tends to rely on whichever one is working best as his out pitch throughout the game. 

You’d think that with such lavish praise, he’d use them more, right? Be a little bit more crafty when he’s not completely dominant with his fastball command? Yeah…no. Not at all.

The amount of thrown curves & changeups combined have barely beat out Buchholz’s second-most used pitch, his cutter. Which is also somewhat strange, since his cutter is better than his god-awful four-seam fastball. Here’s the breakdown of what damage batters have done against all four pitches.

To me, and maybe to you too, using the regular old fastball just is not working. Why not, say, do what Jesse Chavez did, and go cutter-heavy, Buch? You cut 50 points off that wOBA just with that transition. He’s thrown it 515 times already and gotten that slash line, which is worlds better than what his fastball has done. Oh, and look at those triple slashes for the off-speed pitches. And the increased grounders. And the reduced line drives. I just do not understand not using them more. I simply cannot comprehend that.

Actually, y’know what? Maybe looking at the result of contact is not the way to go about it. What if the contact rates are strange? Buchholz could just be the recipient of bad luck. How are the batters swinging at these offerings?

“Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?”

Buchholz has been throwing his fastball more often despite his spotty command (which shows in the lower swing rate), but when people do swing, they are not missing it. However, if he throws his cutter, they make 10% less contact and miss it at a rate over two-and-a-half times higher. Heck, the other three pitches shown have swinging-strike rates at roughly 10% or higher. He is doing the same thing over and over, hoping his command will be there, and when it’s not, he’s getting hammered. More often than not, his command is nonexistent.

This, obviously, is not 2013 anymore. Buchholz cannot rely on getting called strikeouts in droves like he used to. He needs to make adjustments, like using the four-seam less frequently and switching to the cutter and toting it as your primary pitch. That way, when his .336 BABIP and 62.9% LOB% regresses toward the mean, it can stay there. Then, and only then, can we see some real improvement and progression.

We’ve seen glimpses of greatness when Buchholz has faced the Houston Astros: once in Minute Maid Park and once in Fenway. In those two starts, Buchholz used both his cutter and his curveball more than his fastball. In those two starts, Buchholz has put up this combined line: 16 IP, 10 H, 2 ER (1 HR), 2 BB, 21 K, 1 CGSO. Astros or not, you do not get a line like that with awful command of a straight-line pitch. You use pitches that actually move & miss bats.

I’ve said it before about the best pitcher on the staff and I’ll do it again: Buchholz needs to adapt, otherwise the league will tear him apart. Buchholz isn’t referred to as the “ace” of the staff because he’s been good, it’s because he’s the only one left. If he changes up how he throws to batters, the reason he’s the ace may slowly go back to the former definition.