Indians One Game Away From ALCS After 6-0 Win vs Red Sox
October 8, 2016Ohio State’s offense struggles, still beat Indiana, 38-17
October 8, 2016Standing between the Cleveland Indians and a trip to the American League Championship Series is mediocre Boston right-handed pitcher, Clay Buchholz. Having battered the high strung David Price and overperforming Rick Porcello, Buchholz appears to be a welcome break from good major league pitching.
How bad has Buchholz been? With a distressing 4.78 ERA, Buchholz’ peripherals are worse with the starter logging the seventh worst FIP and third worst xFIP in Major League Baseball. The once promising starter was pressed into playoff action following the limitations placed on former Tribe farmhand Drew Pomeranz. Making matters that much better: The Indians against right-handed pitching has been a marvelous display of platoon-based success and aggressive baserunning.
Indians hitters against right-handed pitching has been a fantastic advantage on the base paths as they head into the weekend 93 for 115 in stealing against righties in 2016—an absurdly successful rate. While only three of sevent runners have successfully stolen against Buchholz in 2016, he has not been particularly tough to run on in the past allowing a 61 percent success rate over the course of his career. As detailed by WFNY’s Jeff Nomina, the Indians base runners have heightened run scoring in this series without relying on the steal exclusively.
Game 3’s lineup will likely mirror Thursday’s lineup against Porcello due to similar handedness. Here is WFNY’s forecast with handedness and wRC+:
- Santana 122 S
- Kipnis 123 L
- Lindor 119 S
- Napoli 115 R
- Ramirez 100 S
- Chisenhall 102 L
- Naquin 138 L
- Crisp 100 S
- Perez 84 R
The Indians have mashed right handed pitching in 2016 and they face one of the worst right handed pitchers baseball, an advantageous position, especially with Miller and Allen fully rested to carry a bullpen heavy day.
But why has Buchholz struggled in 2016? More importantly: What do the Indians need to do to keep the struggle bus full of fuel?
First, Buchholz uses a pretty diverse arsenal but heavily weighted toward Fastball/Cutter/Curveball.
Buchholz seems to constantly shift between the four-seam fast ball and the sinker in terms of comfort level.
Time to talk about the problem Buchholz has had in 2016: leaving the fastball up and over the plate, a lot.
Not surprisingly, fastball middle gets hit pretty hard by left-handed hitters.
But as bad as the fastball has been getting mashed, for Buchholz, his biggest issue has been his curveball which has a wRC+ against of 160. The pitch has been brutalized by hitters in 2016, largely because the pitcher is not burying the pitch down and it is frequently being left in the middle of the zone.
Buchholz is just grooving batting practice-like curveballs far too often, and left-handed hitters are punishing his poor command of the strike zone.
Be it inside or outside the strike zone, Buchholz simply does not have the command to dominate an order two times through and this Indians lineup should be ready to feast. For the sake of looking a fool, I will hazard a guess at what Indian will have a big night. I am pushing my chips in on Tyler Naquin.
Naquin owns the bottom half of the strike zone and could very well run into a couple of curveballs down there.
There is one simple key for Indians hitters: Be selective early. If they are selective, they will see a lot of pitches to hit.
Good news for Cleveland: Santana, Napoli Ramirez, Lindor and Perez are tremendously selective hitters. This lineup seems tailored for success against Buchholz but then baseball is a silly game. Played on paper the Indians should have a field day with Buchholz but this game will be played in Fenway instead with the Cleveland Indians one win away from a ticket to the ALCS.
3 Comments
Agree with everything said above – the only word of caution is that Buchholz did find himself down the stretch and had a string of string outings.
Still, let’s finish this thing off.
i agree with your points, but I still don’t trust Buchholz. I think he’s always been overrated, even though he has that single-game ability to be dominant. I don’t think we’ll see that Buchholz in Game 3. Indians win going away.
Sure, Indians profile matches up well as Hatman expertly noted.
Both Sunday pitchers are extremely similar in their boom-or-bust personas.