Blue Jays' Clay Buchholz lacking the weapons to get hitters out

It wasn’t too long ago that starting rotations all around baseball were populated by pitchers who counted on command and guile to survive.

The “crafty lefty” is an archetype that’s awfully familiar to many baseball fans, and although there was never a catchy name for them, finesse righties were far from an endangered species.

Nowadays, as velocity and spin have been prioritized, you just don’t see many more Mark Buehrle types. In an era where the ball carries better than ever, trying to survive by pitching to contact is a dangerous business.

The Blue Jays were hoping the soft-tossing Clay Buchholz could buck the trend and get by on command and savvy this season. That’s starting to look like a vain hope.

On Sunday, the Rangers put a hurting on him to the tune of seven runs over four innings in a 10-2 loss. More concerning for the Blue Jays was just how comfortable their opponents’ at-bats were.

Buchholz threw 76 pitches and induced exactly one swinging strike. His only strikeout was called, and at the end on the day, his K/9 was a measly 4.36 - just over half of the MLB average.

If you’re not going to strike anyone out, you need to be extraordinary in virtually every other category. To his credit, Buchholz’s control has been good, as his BB/K of 2.19 attests, but nothing else is too encouraging. His HR/9 of 1.82 is ugly, and his Statcast numbers are spotty at best:

It’s worth noting the right-hander has pitched just 24.2 innings, but his 6.57 ERA and 5.53 FIP are both bloated and he seems to have come by them honestly.

There’s no good reason to expect a major turnaround because Buchholz’s stuff has been so unimpressive - starting with his fastball. Buchholz’s 88.2 mph heater is 1st percentile in the league and lacks elite spin to make it play up. The Blue Jays knew Buchholz had subpar heat when they signed him, but his velocity has dropped 2 mph from his successful 2018 in Arizona.

The 34-year-old has a five-pitch repertoire, but it bears asking what pitch he can call on to reliably get hitters out. Both his four-seam and two-seam fastballs need to be extremely carefully located to avoid disaster. His curveball is high-spin, but hasn’t earned him a single K this year. His cutter is his best pitch for whiffs - which is not saying much - but the one that’s been hit the hardest. Coming into Sunday’s game his changeup had been pretty reliable, but the Rangers got both of their home runs off of it.

Blue Jays fans have been spoiled by excellent performances from finesse pitchers like Buehrle and Marco Estrada in recent years, but it seems unlikely Buchholz can replicate their success. He doesn’t have the former’s legendary command nor the latter’s truly special changeup. Instead, his performance is more reminiscent of Josh “Smoke and Mirrors” Towers.

Buchholz looks like a guy out there hoping opposing hitters get themselves out. Sometimes that’s enough to get by, but almost as often it results in the kind of outing Buchholz had on Sunday.

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