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 founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
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.
Only thing I MIGHT take issue with is the question of velocity – he was back up over 93 with the fastball in his last start and walked just 2 over 6.2 (not that this is incredibly, but it is better than his 2010 stats). If he gets the velocity back, he won’t repeat his ERA from 2010, but no reason he can’t reproduce the peripherals, and his xFIP last year was 4.07. He isn’t going to suddenly become an ace, but if you are getting him as a throw-in to a deal, that is well worth doing.
“Buchholz was at one point a top pitching prospect”
So was Joba (who was one higher on the list in 2008) and we all know how that turned out.
At a quick glance I saw Price and Kershaw both on that list a few names behind Buchholz.
The one time top prospect line was just to validate his 2010 performance. More of a response to the stat crowd (which includes me) that pointed to his luck and xFIP.
It was a perfect response. I just find it amusing to look at those lists 3-4 years later… and see where all the stud names were actually ranked.
Yeah, but the Yankees refused to let him start
his 3 prev starts his era is below 3.85? anyways its promising. he has developed a bad habit of pitching that high outside fastball which was corrected in his latest start. i saw him continuing to pitch that dumb high outside fastball that had no movement this spring.
though he wont be as good as price or kershaw he will be a good spot starter in fantasy. he started slow last year going 2-2 in april w. no run support. this year hes 2-3 w/ lmted run support . he also has a bad habit of taking his sweet bleepin time between pitches which prolongs games. some speculate this throws off his own players and induces them to take bad at bats, whether this is true its debatable. when clay is on he is on and against weaver it looked good that he was pitching to “contact”. boston had a nice game plan against WEAVER which helped clay. that gm he got up to 95+ on the radar and 84 changeup.
i expect 12-13W w. a 3.9-4.1 era and 125k expecting more is just silly.
i drafted him as my #6 in fantasy so i dont have him in 40% of the weeks.
How will his pesky blister situation affect this analysis?
Since last season, Buchholz has been making a conscious effort to pitch to contact and get more groundballs. He still has all (or most) of the talent, and a crazy good changeup, so he can still go for the strikeout in situations where he needs it.
One possibility for the decreased FB velocity is the new cutter he’s throwing this year. I’d be curious to see if PITCHf/x is calling some of those fastballs, and that is dragging down the average velocity. If the loss of velocity is “real”, then it could pose a problem for the effectiveness of his offspeed stuff, which is really his strength, I believe.
He is not going to be an ace (at least not anytime soon), but I don’t think he’ll be as bad as his season numbers might indicate.
Really, back to the pitch to contact philosophy? That’s just an excuse for not having the stuff to strike out hitters. Why would a ball in play be preferred to a guaranteed out via the strikeout? That makes no sense.
He is allowing fly balls at a career high 40.8% rate this year, so that’s yet another problem pointing to serious issues.
Are you seriously claiming that he does not have swing and miss stuff? Do you think Halladay would rather go 4-5 pitches on every batter or get weak contact on pitches 1-2?
He’s not getting weak contact because the command of all his pitches, especially the fastball, has been abysmal.
Not sure who this was in response to Paul, but I certainly talked about the quality of his stuff throughout the article. If Halladay could guarantee he gets weak contact in the form of a ground out, then of course. But no pitcher could guarantee weak contact for every ball in play!
Unfortunately Buchholz doesn’t even have the K-rate of Roy Halladay, a notorious pitch to contact guy. So I agree 100% with Mike P.
Mike: What is this talk of guarantees? It’s the completely impractical theoretical that I’m responding to. Halladay, nor Bucholz, nor any other pitcher who wants to help their team win is going to try to strike everybody out. Because first of all, MLB hitters are good. And second, they will not pitch deep into games. See e.g., Jonathan Sanchez.
Pardon me. His GB initiative was started TWO years ago, in 2009. You can see the drastic change if you look at his batted ball data and concurrent drop in K rate.
he was sitting on 94mph in his last outing and even got up to 96mph according to pitchf/x. so it cant be his velocity
Um, have you ever watched Greg Maddux pitch? And you’re telling me with the bases loaded and one out you’d rather pitch for a strikeout then a double play?
It’s a lot harder to accidentally give up 2 runs when you strike someone out. Infielders boot balls, balls find gaps… a pitcher can’t make the hitter bat the ball directly at someone…
There is nothing wrong with him physically. He commented in the spring about how comfortable he was with Martinez behind the plate last year. Folks can dismiss that if they want, but if you actually do this thing called watching games, you can see he’s not comfortable and his command is poor. He was decent against the Twins the other day a day after getting over the flu.
A guy with elite talent and a track record who simply needs to pitch through what he’ll understand to be a minor mental adjustment, whose team defense has improved, as a buy low candidate? Y-E-S.
92.4mph now and why does it say cutter:???? thought he had a slider?
Wow, a lot of folks not watching the games.
He was completely not himself until his last start. No velocity, no command. You can presume a dead arm situation that the team knew about and felt he could / should pitch through. (As a former baseball ops consultant I can vouch for there being significant such injuries that have NEVER made it into the press, not even a whisper).
It literally took me two pitches Monday night to notice a profound difference. He was bothered all night by a blister, but otherwise that was a typical 2010 Buchholz game.
And, yes, he pitched successfully to contact last year. If you plot command (K – 2 * BB) versus BABIP for all his starts, you get three outliers where both were terrible and he got hammered. The others show a significant *inverse* relationship between command and BABIP; the more he nibbled, the less hard they hit the ball. I broke it down by batted ball type and there’s no question it was for real — which only confirms observation.
History tells us that batters will adapt at least somewhat to this approach by eventually learning to lay off marginal pitches, but until they do, expect him to have ERA well below FIP. And once they adapt, his K rate will go up to the level he had before he mastered the 2-seamer and cutter / slider.
“(As a former baseball ops consultant I can vouch for there being significant such injuries that have NEVER made it into the press, not even a whisper).”
That’s fascinating. Please go die in a fire.
Why is this necessary? A comment that should removed if there ever was one.
No, that’s not fascinating. That’s just someone prefacing an opinion with his qualifications. What’s really fascinating are those who insist Buchholz was just lucky last year cause a statistic says so.
I don’t read FanGraphs often.
This is what I see upon my first visit since 2010: “Please go die in a fire.”
Did your girlfriend just break up with you or what? Sheesh.
… And Mike’s whole thesis is now under review after Buchholz got 17 swinging strikes last night in New York. Once again, an entire fangraphian analysis based on small smaples of swing and pitch data falls apart at the seems.
good advice in this article, you really hit the nail on the head. except for the…well, everything.
For those of you scoring at home, since this article appeared:
19 IP, 20 K, 3 BB, 11 H, 0.95 ERA.
So (trying to be constructive), where did Mike go wrong? In the assumption that simple season totals represent the current state of affairs. Which is an obviously wrong assumption with pitchers. As I pointed out above, it was clear to anyone watching all the games that Buchholz was not himself in his first five starts and *was* himself in the last start before this article was written.
Now, the game line for that last start does stand out — the first start all year with more GB than FB and not more BB and K, and a tie for best Game Score. If Mike had looked at pitch/fx data for that game versus the others, he would have noted the recovery of velocity. And he might have reached the exact opposite conclusion.
wow. glad i didnt listen to this advice.