The unprojectable Clay Buchholz
- Thread starter iayork
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iayork said:
What I meant was: 3 months of excellence doesn't take away the 2014 season, where he often pitched like a bottom of the rotation starter. It doesn't take away Buchholz's lack of durability during the 2013 season. Sure, he was great in 2013, but he barely threw over 100 innings. It is worth noting that Buchholz has never thrown over 200 innings (in one season) in his professional career. Hence there are legitimate durability concerns going forward.
Do you think other teams look at the last three months and say "Clay Buchholz has reached a new plateau in terms of performance and health!" or do they recognize that he has always had ups and downs in his career?FanSinceBoggs said:
FanSinceBoggs said:
And if they are legitimate enough that you want to try to "sell high" rather than continue to deal with it, wouldn't the acquiring team know that and temper any offers accordingly? If his three months of good/great isn't enough to convince you to keep him despite his inconsistencies of the past, how is it enough to convince another team to pay a premium for him based on the last three months and not a pittance given the last 3+ years of inconsistency?
I think the point was that if a team like the Pirates finds themselves in the position to GFIN at the deadline, they may be desperate enough to trade a real asset for Clay because he is pitching well right now, not because they think he will be a building block for the future.
Wouldn`t the glut of free agent pitchers this winter make it more difficult to trade him? I would think teams out of contention with a pitcher coming up on free agency would try to deal them also. That would make it a buyers market. There are alot of pitchers that seem less of a risk than Buchholz.
keninten said:
Clay's team option for 2016 offers a different type of flavor though.
For a team like the Pirates who generally struggle to both attract and afford quality free agents, i could see the additional level of appeal in making the buy high gamble on a Buchholz.
Philip Jeff Frye said:
I think Buchholz is a "buyer beware" for any team that acquires him or considers acquiring him. Why wouldn't he be? He has been inconsistent throughout his career and his track record doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his long term durability. But as Vegas pointed out, a team might be desperate enough to take a gamble on Buchholz, and give up something really good for him. The Red Sox would be foolish to turn down a potentially more valuable long term asset for a pitcher who probably won't keep up this level of performance for the next two seasons.
FanSinceBoggs said:
I'm not sure I'd do it if they offered me both.
Bell is massively overhyped (and will find himself outside pretty much all mid-season top-100 lists) and Meadows is a talented, but extremely raw 19-year-old who won't be in the bigs for 3-4 years.
I will say, this board needs to get past the idea of "selling high" as if it's someone duping their drunk fantasy football leaguemate. That's now how MLB trades work.
czar said:
Bell looks pretty good right now at AA: more walks than strikeouts, an OBP close to .400. The power hasn't come yet, but it is projected to come (the last tool for many prospects).
Meadows has high upside, I would take a chance on him.
How difficult is it to replace a SP who lacks consistency and durability throughout his career? Buchholz is pitching well now, but when we look at career trends, he can easily be replaced by someone in free agency. In the meantime, the Red Sox might be able to trade Buchholz for a high ceiling prospect.
FanSinceBoggs said:
A SP with a career 3.90 ERA (3.93 FIP) over 1000 career innings? Signed for ~$26M over the next couple years. Yeah, those guys grow on trees. How have they not filled the rotation with five of them already?
I'm with czar, the obsession some have around here with "selling high" is ridiculous. If a team comes along and blows the Sox away, fine, do the deal. But there's not much chance they're going to actively shop Buchholz around.
Red(s)HawksFan said:
But with his contract he could be the top pitcher available at the deadline. So, I don't know if the Sox are going to "actively shop him around", but it wouldn't surprise me if the Sox call a few middling playoff trams and see what the market for Clay would around the deadline. Teams get stupid.
Say he ends the season right around where he is now, and was a FA. What would he get? 5/75M? A 2/26M contract is pretty good....
NDame616 said:
I don't think it is unreasonable for the Sox to listen to all offers or even call a few teams and say "hey, you guys interested in someone like Buchholz?" You aren't a good GM if you aren't doing that, and it's the same reason I think it's ludicrous people say things like "Player XXXX is absolutely, undeniably untouchable." There is absolutely no harm in seeing what the market will bear.
This disconnect (and problem I have) is people who are saying "Guys, Clay is pitching good right now, but we know he's going to suck soon! Let's sell high before anyone else finds out!" as if A) the rest baseball doesn't realize who Clay Buchholz is and B) ignoring the fact that "average" Buchholz has still been worth 2.5ish fWAR/180 IP over his entire career.
You sell Buchholz if you think you can get a great return or you get an equal return and you really feel you aren't going to compete the next few years. Otherwise, it doesn't seem logical for a team to sell for the sake of selling -- as noted in the quoted post -- an asset that is likely well undervalued relative to the FA market.
None of this even bothers to include the segment of the population who think that certain pitchers can handle the Boston market, making acquiring external SPs somewhat complicated. Obviously, Buchholz has demonstrated the ability to pitch at least adequately in this market, so if you subscribe to the "Boston pitcher" theory, it makes the notion of "pushing to sell high at all costs" more perplexing.
The same teams that are pursuing Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz are going after White Sox hurler Jeff Samardzija. That list of teams includes the Royals, Tigers, Twins, Blue Jays, Yankees, Cardinals, Orioles, Angels, and Dodgers, according to Cafardo. Late last week, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports reported that the Astros are also interested in Samardzija. Meanwhile, at this time, the Red Sox reportedly are not interested in moving Buchholz.RedOctober3829 said:
Mlbtr
You mean like last year's Red Sox, who turned John Lackey and Jon Lester into two minor leaguers and the opportunity to pay Rick Porcello $80 million?NDame616 said:
Given our recent FO track record, I might prefer to stick with Buchholz.
Philip Jeff Frye said:
Just because the front office made mistakes last season doesn't mean they must repeat those mistakes again. The idea is to trade Buchholz for a top prospect rather than for another team's headache (Craig).
Red(s)HawksFan said:
Amazingly, Buchholz is already 30 years old and hasn't thrown over 200 IP in a professional season. And he has thrown over 180 IP only once in his professional career. Why should I expected increased durability as he gets older? The opposite usually happens. In addition, he is one year removed from a season in which he performed more like a bottom-of-the-rotation starter than top. These are troubling career trends. He is having an excellent season in 2015, which is why the Red Sox should sell high. He might have no trade value at all this time next year.
True, if he pitches like this over the next two seasons, he is a bargain at 13m per year. But I'm taking the position that Buchholz will not develop consistency and durability in his 30s, something he couldn't develop in his 20s. As such, I don't see 13m per year as a bargain for Buchholz. I would rather invest that money in a pitcher who is less likely to breakdown on me.
FanSinceBoggs said:
Again, what makes you think teams don't consider this? If the Red Sox are worried enough about Buchholz "breaking down" or going into "bad Buchholz mode" soon, why wouldn't other MLB teams consider the same possibility?
And as I've stated at least three times in this thread, Buchholz is still fairly paid at $13m a year even if you take his career track record in aggregate (in case you want to ignore all the gains from 2015 and therefore think none are sustainable) and assume he's only going to put up ~150-180 IP in any given year. Pitchers are expensive on the open market, these days.
As I also keep saying, you obviously listen on anyone on your team, regardless of how "untouchable" you want them to be, but it's really tough to construct an argument where selling Buchholz just for the sake of selling him does this team good in 2016. Either he's too volatile a commodity, in which case everyone is gun shy about paying him and you get little return in exchange for his potential upside, or everyone agrees he's valued like a bonafide ace, in which case the Sox really shouldn't be in the business of giving those away (particularly ones who have demonstrated ability to pitch in Boston) given how splendidly they have done on the FA market the last few years.
Maybe if this team was like "screw it, let's blow it up and plan for 2018" you can create arbitrage by going after 19-year-olds deep in someone's system, but I can't imagine them doing it.
FanSinceBoggs said:
It's convenient to rag on Buchholz for last season, but if you look at defense independent metrics he really was just slightly below average. Moreover, he pitched the season with a knee injury that required surgery in the offseason, which can't have helped his performance. Without any massaging of the stats, he earned 1.5 WAR, which I believe puts his value, even in a terrible year statistically, right around his contract value.
With regards to breaking down physically, what were the injuries that kept him from reaching 200 IP? Will he fall asleep with his baby in a weird position on his shoulder again in the future? Maybe as he turns 30, he becomes more diligent about his conditioning?
And, most importantly, as others have said, you need to define what you mean by "sell high." Do you mean auction him off to the highest bidder and take whatever that happens to be over the next month? Or do you mean, "If somebody offers substantially more for Clay Buchholz than the drek that was acquired for Lester and Lackey, two pitchers with much better track records, then take it?"
Plympton91 said:
The sleeping-baby-ex-machina makes Clay's inning shortfall appear more of an epiphenomenon than it should. If I remember rightly, the specific diagnoses in Buchholz' interrupted seasons were spondylosis and thoracic outlet syndrome, which are both more mysterious and more repeatable than my-baby-made-my-shoulder-go-to-sleep. Neither one of them is known to be treatable by diligent conditioning or by the kid growing up, but IANAD.
czar said:
Presumably, this year is good Clay, and presumably the Sox would be trading him to a team that is looking to make a deep run into the playoffs. And so Clay would be much more valuable to them than to the Sox, given their relative positions in the standings. As it is, the Sox are kind of "wasting" a season of good Clay. Another franchise, in prime playoff position, would theoretically be maximizing good Clay.
Clay now ranks as follows among 49 qualifying AL pitchers:
fWAR: 6
FIP: 4
xFIP: 9
SIERA: 9
HR/FB: 5 (Factoid: He and Miley are the only AL East pitchers in the top 18 in this category)
HR/9: 2
He has now gone 52 consecutive innings since allowing his last home run. I doubt he's a threat to Greg Minton's 254-inning record, but that's still impressive.
fWAR: 6
FIP: 4
xFIP: 9
SIERA: 9
HR/FB: 5 (Factoid: He and Miley are the only AL East pitchers in the top 18 in this category)
HR/9: 2
He has now gone 52 consecutive innings since allowing his last home run. I doubt he's a threat to Greg Minton's 254-inning record, but that's still impressive.
ivanvamp said:
But does "good Clay"/"bad Clay" mean anything predictive?
He was eh in 2012. He was "fantastic" in 2013, but lucky (low BABIP, unsustainable called K%), then got hurt. He was hurt for most of the beginning of 2014, but good Clay actually appeared late in the season (3.50 FIP 2nd half). He then had knee surgery and here we are in 2015.
It's nice to compartmentalize Clay into "good Clay" and "bad Clay" but A) I'm not sure the line is as black-and-white as people think and B) even if it was, it's not as neatly predictable as people think.
I find it unlikely a team is like "well, we know Clay will go in the tank eventually, but he's good this year, so let's pay out the nose and ride the wave." If anything, I think it would be an equal (if not bigger) risk for the Sox in saying "we will sell this flawed, but underpaid asset for market value" and have Buchholz keep pitching above career norms for the next few years (while the team continues to whiff on the trade/FA market).
Sprowl said:
Pretty sure it was not Buchholz, but rather, either Bard or Beckett you are thinking of with respect to thoracic outlet syndrome.
2010 (177 IP between MLB/minors): Hamstring injury running bases
2011 (83 IP): spondylosis (not Googling, trusting you and assuming this was the back fracture)
2012 (192 IP): two-week esophagitis bout, which was rumored to be from Buchholz screwing up some pain meds (whether he was the one who was an idiot was never ascertained, to my knowledge)
2013 (113 IP): shoulder issues (trap weakness? I think this was the "baby sleeping" injury)
2014 (181 IP): was put on DL for two weeks with "suckitis" (actually, I guess they called it a knee injury and he did have knee surgery in the offseason, but it was convenient timing).
czar said:
Not disagreeing with anything in particular, but I wanted to point out that most people (and pro-athletes) don't get elective knee surgery for the hell of it - I'm sure there was "something there" to the extent it was affecting him as a pitcher.
As for the baby thing - it's possible to get an injury if you load up an unused or tired muscle in an odd way. But again, regardless of how it actually happened, I'm comfortable believing there was a problem with his shoulder and very much doubt Buchholz just randomly decided to suck.
Sometimes the Uniformed Fans approach to players who have chronic nagging injuries sort of reminds me of parents who don't want to deal with a kid who has learning disabilities - if only little Johnny *tried harder* and *brought his will to bear* his grades would be better. Buchholz's medical history is a real thing.
The Yankees are reportedly interested in Clay. Call up Cashman and tell him you can have him straight up for Aaron Judge.
Rovin Romine said:
Not disagreeing with anything you said, merely breaking down his history.
It is also worth noting that it was extremely clear Buchholz was hurt (or at least, pitching with some sort of malady) at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 from a velo standpoint. That's actually his only arm injury during his career (outside of a "tired shoulder" which caused him to be shut down before the 2007 World Series run).
RedOctober3829 said:
Judge or Severino. Problem is, Judge and Severino are probably the two untouchables in the Yankees system. I wouldn't trade Buchholz for any of the Yankees other prospects. I'm not sold on Mateo, forget Bird, and Sanchez. Jagielo is interesting but not enough. Some deal revolving around Juan De Leon would be acceptable, but hard to reach an agreement on.
I read on another site that the Red Sox should trade Buchholz for Jon Singleton. What nonsense. Let's trade Buchholz for a guy who has an admitted marijuana addiction, has previously been suspended for drug use, and who grew up in the laid back culture of southern California. If there is anyone not built to handle the pressure of Boston Red Sox baseball, it is Jon Singleton.
Ben Buchanan on trading Buchholz:
http://www.overthemonster.com/2015/6/26/8845301/red-sox-trade-rumors-clay-buchholz
"who grew up in the laid back culture of southern California."
What?! LOL, come on, do you know how many players come from SoCal? Freddie Lynn and Ted Williams did OK in Boston.
What?! LOL, come on, do you know how many players come from SoCal? Freddie Lynn and Ted Williams did OK in Boston.
Two things we know about Clay:czar said:
(1) He is not durable. Never pitched 200 innings in his entire major league career. Not once.
(2) He is not consistent from year to year. He just isn't.
We can come up with all these reasons why the two things above are true. But they are true.
If the Sox don't seal Clay when his value is really high (as I'm sure it is now), then if we get hurt/bad Clay next year we will wish the Sox had dealt him.
And given his track record, I feel fairly confident we won't get good/healthy Clay two seasons in a row. If they keep him, obviously I hope I'm very, very wrong.
ivanvamp said:
You responded to nothing of substance in that post.
(1) I think this is a debatable argument given the injury history I posted upthread, but if he's not durable, he's not durable. Other teams know that. It's not some magic that Sox fans know that Pirates fans don't. Teams aren't going to be like "who cares if he breaks down, here, have all the Carlos Correa's!"
(2) Just saying "he just isn't" doesn't refute the fact that he's actually been pretty good since the beginning of 2013 if you acknowledge that his "bad pitching" lined up with decreased velocity and a known shoulder issue. Even "bad" Buchholz isn't as bad as people like to think.
Again, some people on this board have a weird obsession with "selling high" as if this is a fantasy football league and your bro will take Eddie Royal for Calvin Johnson because Royal has scored 5 TDs in the last 2 games. Every issue the "sell high" people have with Clay is something that other teams also -- shockingly -- know.
The only rational argument I can construct for selling Buchholz is if this team thinks they cannot compete over the next two years and can gain arbitrage by grabbing low-level, high-upside guys a few years away from the majors. Otherwise, big market teams who think they can compete in 2016 don't trade away underpaid (or at worst, fairly paid) assets who have demonstrated they can pitch adequately in said market (career 2.5 fWAR/170 IP) from a position (SP) that they continually have whiffed on from a FA/trade standpoint unless another GM goes full-on stupid. It may happen, but that's a bridge you cross when you get there. There's a difference between "we'll trade Buchholz if someone panics and gives us Carlos Correa on July 31st" and "we need to sell Buchholz high, see what the best is we can get for him." The latter is where I think the disconnect with a lot of guys in this thread lies.
FanSinceBoggs said:
There is a 0.0001% chance the Red Sox trade Clay Buchholz, under contract through the end of 2017, to the Yankees.
I'm not sure I'd trade a B-level prospect for Singleton right now (although it really has nothing to do with California and more with him having subpar plate discipline, power that hasn't developed as projected, and the fact that he plays way down on the defensive spectrum.)
I'm not sure I'd consider Ben Buchanan the most authoritative (level-headed?) guy w/r/t Buchholz (or any of this team's SP for that matter).
Sports on Earth piece (originally from BP Boston) on Clay vs. Hamels: http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/133882422/clay-buchholz-versus-cole-hamels-red-sox
If the Sox were to be sellers, Clay would have to be one of the best pitchers available (if made available).
Such fabled event must somehow be triggered only whence said team is not placed last among all its divisional rivals.Rasputin said:
You'd have to get a *lot.*TimScribble said:
We plan to contend these next two seasons, and Bogaerts and Betts turning into excellent regulars makes that timeframe plausible.
Buchholz is due to be paid basically Masterson money over that timeframe. (OK, a bit more.)
FG gives them an 18.3% shot at making the playoffs using their pre-season projections, and just 3.4% using season stats to date. But even if you're bullish and think that the team is finally living up to its pre-season projections, the problem is that 10.6% of that 18.3% is making the play-in game. So they give them just a 13% chance of making the actual playoffs -- 1 in 8 basically, at best, and probably much less depending on how much weight you give to their actual performance this year.ivanvamp said:
The greater problem outside of the projections is they only have 2 1/2 starters and 2 relievers, so it's tough to see where the consistency is going to come from to go on a run. And their best position player is hurt with an injury that could linger. But yeah, buyers, sure.
ivanvamp said:
Seven games out and seven games under represent an improvement of three games in the last two weeks and four games in the last two and a half, respectively, over the worst point in the season. And while on the 20th of June, we were six games out of fourth, now we're four games out of fourth and were we to gain six games, we'd be in second place.
We're not out of the hole, but we're climbing, and doing it while playing good teams.
Rudy Pemberton said:
Other teams.
If they're buying, they need to buy a lot. A mid rotation starter or better plus a reliever at least as good as Tazawa, and maybe a catcher. I think between Holt and Nava coming back they can cobble together production at 1B. And as someone said, who's selling if the Sox are buying?