The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham on Clay Buchholz, who drew more than his fair share of luck on the way to a 2.33 ERA last season:
Boston’s Buchholz Was Lucky In 2010 And Knows It
But the peripheral statistics suggest that Buchholz was, in fact, lucky and that fans shouldn't expect a repeat of that performance.
"I don't know the exact stats. But I know in my head it seemed like I had one point in every game where I caught a break," Buchholz said last night after throwing two scoreless innings against the Minnesota Twins in an 8-4 loss. "That adds up after a while."
Indeed ...
We seemed to have crossed the Rubicon, my friends, with a baseball writer smart enough to understand this stuff and a player who doesn’t get defensive and aggressive when asked about it.
As Abraham notes, last season Buchholz gave up a .263 batting average on balls in play (BABiP), roughly 30 points lower than MLB average. Buchholz's BABiP was ridiculously low (.188) with runners in scoring position. He probably should have given up a few more home runs and he was well-supported by his teammates in the lineup.
It was a perfect storm of pitcher's good luck, and it's not going to happen again. Not to Clay Buchholz, anyway. Not this year. He throws plenty hard but if his strikeout rate doesn't go up significantly, his ERA will.
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