Clay Buchholz had a bad outing tonight against the Twins. If you are going to have games where you give up 5 earned runs they are much better to have in spring training than in the regular season. Clay’s spring ERA is now over 10, but you have to take that with a grain of salt because pitchers take more risks and work on new pitches in spring training. What is frustrating is Buchholz lack of consistency. When he was called up late last season it looked like he had finally turned the corner and his bad outings were few and far between. The one area that Clay seemed to have improved upon was his performance when there were runners on. Tonight’s game was a step backwards.
“No explanation. I made some good pitches at certain times, but I just didn’t make as many good pitches as I needed to,” said Buchholz. I had to adjust for being down in the zone in the first inning. I felt like I did a good job with damage control in the first inning, only giving up the one (run). Went back out, got ahead of the first hitter, threw an alright pitch but it just caught too much plate and he hit it. In my head, I knew they were going to run because just about all of them are pretty quick on the bases. I started thinking too much about them running and making a certain pitch at a certain time. I paid for it.”
The team needs Buchholz to continue to develop as a starter, we must hope that tonight’s game was just a minor bump in what has been an upward trend.
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