Clay Buchholz: Don’t Buy Low

Clay Buchholz entered draft season as an obvious bust candidate to statistically-minded fantasy owners after finishing 2010 with the largest ERA-xFIP differential amongst qualified starters. However, Buchholz was at one point a top pitching prospect, like top three in all of baseball, and any scout would tell you that his stuff was good enough to make him one of the best young pitchers in the game. So the question was whether Buchholz’s ERA in 2011 would rise to the 4.00 level his xFIP suggested or if he would continue to improve his underlying skills while battling the luck regression gods, and see his ERA jump to just the low-to-mid 3.00 range. Well so far the bust side has been right, as he has posted a disappointing 4.81 ERA after six starts. Is it time to send his owner some offers? Nope.

It is quite unusual to find literally no positive signs in any player’s statistical profile, but I am digging here and cannot seem to point to anything favorable as I look at Buchholz. In his 33.2 innings so far, he has struck out just 17 batters. In fact, his strikeout rate graphed would paint a scary picture. It has declined every single season, from a high of 8.7 during his debut year, down to its current 4.5. If that is not enough to illustrate how much dominance he has lost, his SwStk% and Contact% tell a similar story. His SwStk% is also in free fall, landing at just 7.2% so far this year (versus 9.4%-9.9% over his last three seasons), while his Contact% has increased to 83%, well above the 80.7% league average. This is quite a surprise coming from a pitcher with supposedly such a high quality repertoire.

Sticking with the pitch results theme, we come to something very concerning. His fastball velocity has declined from 94.1 MPH last year to just 92.1 this year. Two miles per hour is rather significant and too large to chalk up to “it’s still early, his velocity should improve into the summer”. When you combine his velocity loss with his strikeout rate drop, the warning bells should be sounding.

It does not end there, however. His control, which was always good in the minors, but more like just average in the Majors, has fallen into awful territory. With 18 free passes issued already, he has actually walked one more batter than he has struck out! His F-Strike% is at a career worst 54.5%, while his Zone% is just below last season’s mark at 44%, but still a career low as well.

Unfortunately for Buchholz owners, I cannot find any single metric that would give one hope of an imminent turnaround. Whether he is hiding an injury or his mechanics are out of whack and the Sox cannot seem to fix them at this point, something appears wrong that cannot be explained away by simply calling it a slow start. Given his upside and how much I have liked him in the past, it would be tough for me to outright drop him though, but of course, this is highly dependent on your league context to begin with. If you do not own him, I cannot possibly advise targeting him in a trade, as there are many other safer options ripe for making a buy low attempt.





Mike Podhorzer is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year. He produces player projections using his own forecasting system and is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. His projections helped him win the inaugural 2013 Tout Wars mixed draft league. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.

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Aaron
12 years ago

Recent trades involving Bucky over at TradeBashers.com,

Buchholz for Strasburg – 76% preferred Strasburg
Buchholz and Brian Roberts for Pedroia – 80% preferred Pedroia
Buchholz, Andrus, and Werth for Hanley – 88% preferred Hanley

It seems like people are considering Buchholz as a throw in player in most trades, which is probably about where he should be right now.