Boston Red Sox’s rotation making headlines for all the wrong reasons
Judging from the photograph above, it looks like Clay Buchholz is having trouble soliciting fans to take his autograph these days. With good reason too, as the Boston Red Sox ace was slapped around on Tuesday night by the the Toronto Blue Jays in an 11-8 loss.
Buchholz has shown flashes of earning the ace designation in that past, but the biggest and most vital element to being an ace Buchholz does not have: consistency. Nor do any members of Boston’s rotation so far in 2015. The five starters have been all over the place this season.
Buchholz failed to pitch past the fourth inning for the second time in five starts this season. He has managed three quality starts previous to his dud versus the Jays on Tuesday, but when he has been bad, he’s been really bad. In a previous outing on April 12 against the New York Yankees, Buchholz serviced the opposition with nine earned runs in 3.1 innings of work.
Last night, his 2.1 IP gave way to five runs (four earned). By the time Buchholz’s work was done and the third inning was in the books, the Red Sox had gone from holding a 4-0 lead to being down 5-4.
The Sox’s starting rotation presently has the worst collective ERA in all of baseball at 5.84. The pitching staff dished out an unforgivable 17 hits to the Jays on Tuesday resulting in 11 runs. It marked the 11th time through 21 games that Red Sox pitching had allowed double digit hits and the 11th time their offense had been outhit by the competition. For a team offensively that ranks inside the top third of the league in hits, that’s not a good sign.
The Red Sox are a club boasting a deep reserve of capable bats who were thought to be the favorites to come out of the AL East mainly because of just that, but few forecasted their pitching to be this atrocious. Being outhit regularly in the cool month of April doesn’t bode well for them when the hitter friendly days of summer arrive.
This is how bad the Red Sox’s rotation has been to open the season: Joe Kelly, the No. 5 starter in the rotation by trade, has the lowest ERA at 4.94. When your most effective starting hurler is flirting with a 5.00 ERA after fours outings, things are bleak. The rest of the starters fall into place like so:
- Justin Masterson – 5.16
- Clay Buchholz – 5.76
- Rick Porcello – 6.48
- Wade Miley – 8.62
Welcome to the AL East, Justin, Rick and Wade. While we’re on Porcello, I might as well point out that he is tied with three other pitchers for having surrendered more long balls than anybody else in the AL. Miley, meanwhile, has the ninth highest WHIP league-wide for any starter with a minimum of 10 IP. Tuesday night’s outpouring of hits and runs by Boston moved them into a second overall ranking in MLB for runs scored against and for hits allowed.
With Alexi Ogando lingering in the bullpen and having success so far in his first season outside a Texas Rangers uniform, maybe it’s time manager John Farrell tabs him as a starter for an upcoming contest. The 31-year-old has a 3.40 ERA as a starter in 48 career outings and historically been quite sharp at Fenway Park with a 2.12 ERA in 17 innings pitched.