A week ago Clay Buchholz was anointed the surefire AL Cy Young award winner.
What a difference a week makes.
The Boston Red Sox were coming off of a disastrous three-game sweep in Arlington over the weekend at the hands of the Texas Rangers. The surprisingly-mediocre Minnesota Twins were next up as the team returned home to Fenway Park. The lowly Twins seemed to be just what the doctor ordered: a nice rebound team to beat up on at home.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, Joe Mauer and company brought their “A” game, at least for three innings. While Buchholz was shelled for two runs in the first inning, his counterpart Vance Worley was mowing through the Red Sox lineup. Worley saw the minimum of nine batters while striking out four through the first three innings.
Meanwhile, the Twins continued to get to Buchholz, who, until this point, had been nearly flawless this season. Luckily for the Red Sox, a Buchholz outing in which he allows four runs in six innings while striking out nine, in a game that Boston ultimately won 6-5, is considered a bad outing. So what happened to Buchholz in this game?
I saw this one coming a mile away. There was pretty much no chance Buchholz would pitch well last night. His numbers this year have just been too good to be true. The law of averages alone should have given us warning that a game like this was coming.
The biggest factor in Buchholz “bad” outing was the nonsense about cheating that the Toronto Blue Jays brought up last week. MLB pitchers are the biggest head cases in sports. The smallest little thing can mess with their head all night and throw off their game. When the last place Blue Jays accused him of rubbing his forearm too much, Buchholz had to be cognizant of that as he pitched last night. Every move he made with his fingers in between pitches was going to be scrutinized. How can that not be a distraction in a sport where your job is to be pinpoint accurate while throwing the ball 90 mph?
Buchholz will be just fine. If leaving a game down 4-3 is considered a bad outing then maybe that Cy Young award isn’t far out of reach after all.
What do you think? Was Buchholz affected by the cheating allegations? Feel free to share your thoughts or comments to keep the conversation going.
Aidan Kearney also writes for his own blog aidanfromworcester.com. Follow him on Twitter @aidanfromworc.
