The Red Sox have some important pitching changes in the works, as Tim Britton of the Providence Journal reports on Twitter. Manager John Farrell says that the club will activate lefty Eduardo Rodriguez to start on Tuesday, with veteran right-hander Clay Buchholz bumped to the pen.
It’s been a long wait for Rodriguez, who has missed the first two months of the season while working back from a knee issue. He showed immense promise last year, and was expected to hold down a rotation spot for the foreseeable future.
Of course, expectations never were that he’d be taking the ball from Buchholz. That move may not last the rest of the season, but it’s a major step for a pitcher whose last major league relief appearance came in his sophomore season of 2008.
Shifting to a relief role also speaks volumes about where things stand with regard to Buchholz’s 2017 club option, which is valued at $13.5MM and comes with a $500K buyout. It seemed reasonably likely to be picked up heading into the year, but Buchholz has managed only a 6.35 ERA with 5.9 K/9 and 3.8 BB/9 over his first ten starts.
That’s a steep drop-off from Buchholz’s work last year and most of the rest of his ten-year MLB career. If he can’t turn things around during the 2016 season, he could end up looking for a make-good free agent opportunity come next fall.
Great!! Love the direction Dombrowski is taking the organization between benching Pablo, and now this. It’s awesome.
No, it sucks. If Buch were any good he could be flipped for prospects or a key piece. Instead hes a throw away.
I agree, I was just excited that somebody who came in here finally has enough nerve to put the best players out on the field. If Buch was any good, they’d probably keep him anyways.
Clay sucks
I could see Buchholz as the Pirates next reclamation project in 2017. It would be an interesting fit and probably the best place for him to have any chance of regaining his form and eventually exiting the game on his own terms.
I can image there will be a decent size line of teams willing to buy low on Buch. Something with a couple million base with incentives on number of starts or innings pitched worth up to another couple of million.
A larger line if Buch does decent work in the pen and is willing to stay there.
He’ll be a Cub. Gammons already speculated on it
Oh. Well if Gammons said it, it must be true.
Sounds like Buch could have a future with Cubs or Athletics since both teams seem to love ex-Red Sox players
Cubs aren’t interested.
That’s a pretty terrible handle, Theo.
Up vote
Uh, yes, they are
Well, the former Red Sox brass is, after all, in Chicago
Happy to see this happen, ERod needs to work out of the rotation, Wright needs to stay in the rotation, no preferential treatment based on salary, performance is everything. Plus, if Clay works through his issues and gets hot, he’s a plus pitcher in the rotation. It’s a 162 game season and you need a lot of innings out of a lot of pitchers.
Good on Dombrowski for addressing the much needed and well past due removal of Buchholz from the rotation. Not since Dice K has a Sox starter been so tedious (infuriating) to watch.
Apparently you already forgot the majority of Porcello’s season last year.
Or Lackey pre-2013.
Him too!
Josh Donaldson show makes Kelly and Uehara look bad … Gee maybe they should consider pitching around him… And Kelly outting looked just as bad as Buchholtz … Poor poor pitching
Joe Kelly is a reliever. Sox should re-acquire Rich Hill or go get Teheran. Next to the bullpen? Joe Kelly, please.
Career splits show Kelly has been just as good as a starter as a reliever, On top of that his splits show his stats are ever so slightly better after 25 pitches than before.
So looking at his numbers in my opinion suggest he could be either a slightly better than average #5 starter or an ok reliever. Personally the former sounds better than the later. No one is claiming he’s ace material, but keeping your team in the game every fifth day is important.
Looked like an ace in Spring, pitched poorly before injury, ace in start 1 from DL bad but not terrible today.
Most good relievers are failed starters – Mariano Rivera comes immediately to mind. Buchholz has always had the stuff, but I don’t know if he just doesn’t know how to turn over a lineup effectively by mixing pitches, or if there’s a mental block or something else. Watching him pitch is painful. Maybe if he goes to the ‘pen and instructed to just air it out, stick to two pitches and an inning at a time he’d be useful. The Red Sox need some bullpen help, because Koji is starting to look really old and Smith is done for the year.
How much of the future is foreseeable?