Red Sox Avoid Sweep Thanks To Weird Haircut Clay Buchholz
Red Sox starting pitcher Clay Buchholz has a weird new haircut. The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham asked him what provoked such a change, to which Buchholz said, “My ERA”.
So far, so good, as Buchholz came into Sunday’s start with a 6.03 ERA and walked away with an ERA of 5.73, after allowing three runs over 6.1 innings. Buchholz is at his best when he’s getting outs on the ground, and he did just that against Toronto, inducing 13 ground ball outs, the most outs he’s recorded on the ground in any start this year.
Despite the solid outing for Buchholz, I’m not dumb enough to expect that he’s about to go on a run of quality starts from here. This is what we have come to expect when it comes to Buchholz. You never know what you’re going to get when he takes the mound. You could get an ace-like seven shutout innings with nine strikeouts, you could get shitbum-like 3.1 innings with 10 runs allowed, or you could get a solid start, like six innings, two runs and seven strikeouts.
I didn’t just pull any those numbers out of my ass, either. The aforementioned pitching lines are all Buchholz starts from this year, and that’s why he will continue to drive Red Sox fans crazy until he no longer wears the uniform. He can be that good, but he can also be that bad. But I’m sure fans would be plenty happy if he were able to consistently be somewhere in between, like how he pitched on Sunday in Toronto.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway from Sunday’s victory was seeing Mike Napoli hit a bomb to centerfield. And it wasn’t a dinky home run like the one he hit in Baltimore to the opposite field that looked like it was going to be a popup. This was a shot, like the ones that he was hitting when he was on a tear in spring training. This becomes a whole different lineup once the Red Sox get Napoli back in a groove. He’s been known to be streaky, so let’s hope that he’s now streaking in the right direction. And no, I don’t mean down the street outside of Daisy Buchanan’s (RIP).