Buccholz explanation

Well, a couple of posts ago I said something wasn't right with Buchholz. Today we found out that he tore/broke the middle fingernail during the 2nd inning of his last start. Clay claims it only effected his fastball, but I wasn't so sure and I wanted to see if this really was the case. (all graphs courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net and baseball.bornbybits.com)

First release point in the overall starts vs 1st two innings vs. the last 3.



You can clearly see that his release point has been effected in these later innings for whatever reason. It's wider more oval shaped than a tight circle we'd like to see. It could be that he's trying to get more on top of the ball rather than behind it so less pressure is placed on that nail and nail bed. As a result he has to fight his body's muscle memory about where to release the ball.

Next the break of the pitches in 3 graphs. (overall, 1st two innings, last 3 innings)



Bingo. We hit the jackpot in finding it. If you look at the overall chart of all his starts it's a nice grouping of ovals/circles with a more steep slope than the other two. The same can be said of the 1st two innings versus the last several innings. There were no real tight groupings as his movement was all over the place on all of his pitches meaning he had very little idea where the pitch was going to end up when it left his hand. It also meant that he couldn't grip the ball as hard to control the spin when it comes out of his hand.

SUMMARY: For once we're able to confirm what the pitcher is telling us with a number of great details (inning, pitch, precise injury location). With that we can see is that it clearly effected him and his delivery/release point. The last thing anyone wants in the Red Sox organization or baseball fans in general is to see him possibly ruin his career with an injury resulting from altered mechanics due to his finger.
He'll only going to miss the minimum DL time as these are fairly easy to predict. So keep him on your bench like I am and wait for a few starts for him to get to full steam.

He's owned in 83% of CBS leagues and 89.4% of ESPN leagues.