He was ~5.00 FIP pitcher last year. He has been ~5.00 FIP pitcher for the last ~2 months now. Even if you believe there's some knuckleball skill to minimizing HR/hard contact and his ERA ~0.5 less than his FIP, a 4.50 ERA moving forward isn't ideal. Over the course of a full season that's plenty valuable (see Wakefield's utility as a #4/5 inning eater), but the Red Sox are now in a position where they should be A) maximizing their stretch run expected wins and B) thinking about who'd be in a playoff rotation/on the roster should they make it there. I think a 4.50 ERA that chews up innings is less valuable in both cases, particularly with expanded rosters.
First, I'd say just taking an aggregate over the last two months, which includes two post-injury starts where he clearly isn't right and a big hole punched in it from the proceeding DL stint is mining stats in an attempt to prove a point.
Second, it ignores the fact that pre-injury he had one start where he got blown up by Detroit (allowed two runs in the first two innings, then two scoreless frames before giving up another four before getting out of the fifth) and outside of that he had three non-quality starts in that time period, a 5 inning 3 run outing (so one IP shy but in the ER category), a 5 inning start against the Angels where he went five scoreless before giving up 4 in the 6th (on a grand slam) and a six inning start against Texas where he allowed one in the 2nd, two in the 6th (ending that inning at the exact definition of "quality start"), and then three in the 7th. In both cases those big innings ended with the Sox still ahead and were up big heading into those big innings. In most other scenarios the starter gets pulled before even having the opportunity to give up those kinds of single innings totals.
The rest of his starts in that time period were 6 innings - 3 runs, 8 innings - 1 run, and 9 innings - 0 runs.
You base this magic 5.00 FIP pitcher suggestion off of a 72 inning workload riding the shuttle last year while ignoring about 35 innings of ML work that predated it, all of his AAA numbers, and the roughly 100 IPs of ML level work he put up prior to June just this year.
Also, His HR/FB rate was 12.2% last season while this year it's 7.1%. Both are on the extreme fringe of what analysis suggests is the sustainable range for a pitcher, so hanging your hat on the 2015 numbers while citing HR/FB suppression is pretty fucking goofy. It's even more questionable when those big innings that came in July were frequently tied to giving up home runs with men on base (often from HBPs and walks, a real wart that accompanies any knuckleballer).
If instead we just throw all of this into a pot and take his ML aggregate numbers you probably wind up with a far more realistic representation of Steven Wright than what you are suggesting: 3.58 ERA, 4.03 FIP, 8.9% HR/FB, 7.2 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 pitcher. A guy you really like as your third best starter and would be content with as your #2.
My guess is, there's something like a 20% chance Buchholz is worse than that, a 60% chance he's equal or marginally better than that, and a 20% chance he's much better than that. And (historically) Wright's "upside" isn't Buchholz "upside" over small stretches of games.
So a guy who, in 110 innings of work this year, has an ERA of 5.20 and a near perfect FIP match of 5.28 is only a 20% chance to be worse than a guy with a 3.33 ERA and 3.76 FIP over 156 innings this year as well? Like all things originating from someone's ass these numbers are shit. Buchholz had three starts of 4.1 innings - 3 runs, 6.1 innings - 1 run, 6 innings - 1 run and now suddenly people want to crown him. Lets just ignore that he's given up runs in two of his last three relief appearances.
Also, what Steven Wright did for this club from the start of the year through June was about as good a stretch as Buchholz has ever done with one brief flash in 2013 as the only exception. Hell, if we define small stretches as just a handful of games Wright has had equal or better flashes within 2016 to anything Buchholz did in 2013. Like May 18th to June 20th when his starts were:
8 innings - 3 runs
7 innings - 2 runs
9 innings - 2 runs
5 innings - 0 runs
7.1 innings - 0 runs
7.1 innings - 3 runs
9 innings - 0 runs
The best stretch Buchholz had in 2013 was six starts to open the year:
7 innings - 1 run
7 innings - 0 runs
8 innings - 0 runs
8 innings - 2 runs
7.2 innings - 2 runs
7 innings - 0 runs
So what Wright lacked in complete run prevention he made up for in innings - both in going deeper into starts (two complete games and 9 innings of shutout work lost in extra innings) and in taking stretch to seven games instead of six. Oh yeah, and Buchholz didn't make it past 110 innings that year and when he returned in the playoffs was throwing mid-80's fastballs and he's never been the same again.
All of this is ignoring his comments re: his shoulder still possibly being an issue, which isn't exactly a vote of confidence.
And here is the one valid point about Wright. He didn't look good yesterday, his fastball velo was down, his knuckle ball was clearly not consistent because his release point and arm action was a mess. That is the argument for sticking with Buchholz, not the fever dreams of Clay Buchholz circa 2013 showing back up for a limited time engagement to cap the 2016 season.
I'll also add - you can make the same argument for EdRo in my opinion, who came back from injury earlier this year clearly still tentative and physically uncomfortable. Wright's return is the second time the club has brought a starter back from injury and into the ML rotation when they were clearly not 100%. I'm pretty sure we're seeing #3 concurrent with #2 as well right now with EdRo's return from the hamstring issue, only made worse by the fact that there were starts in AAA to be had up to this point where both Wright and EdRo could tune up if that was all they need. Instead we're putting people into ML games who clearly aren't physically where they should be for a precision craft such as ML pitching.
To recap - acting like a less than awesome stretch in July is the 'real' Steven Wright when the three months prior and starts within that exact same stretch were generally excellent is lame. Acting like the last three starts from Buchholz means "Cy" Buchholz has arrived is just delusional. But neither are as bad as an organization willing to put guys back into the rotation who clearly aren't ready to pitch effectively when the club is in the middle of a pennant race.
