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Clay Buchholz is cheating...nowonder why he's doing so well


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 please post articles along with links. We have been over this before. 

 

Requires actual technical thought.  BO is not there yet.

 

Ok, so a guy that tried it 'only once during a bullpen session' knows what it looks like and that is why he knows'....rrrrrriiiggghhhtttt!

 

Jack knows it because he did it .....more than one bullpen session......or.....what better way to take the attention off this disaster that has been the Jays this season and give them an excuse.

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http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/05/03/tom-verducci-thinks-clay-buchholz-is-cheating/

 

n his latest, SI’s Tom Verducci looks at the video evidence — and uses his own observations over the past couple of years — and concludes that Clay Buchholz is doctoring the baseball with some sort of substance that is not permitted under the rules:

Buchholz’s left forearm glistens this year with some kind of substance that is not rosin or perspiration. As the righthander admitted, he does keep water on his uniform and in his hair and does pat the rosin bag on his left forearm — all apparently legal. But rosin is white and has a matte finish. Something wet and mostly clear glistens from Buchholz’s left wrist to his elbow, the moisture of which darkens the edge of his left undershirt sleeve.

I wonder if Eck will now play the “Verducci never played the game” card. Seems like he would.

Anyway, here’s one of baseball’s most respected voices with Hayhurst’s back. He quotes extensively from Dirk’s book about how pitchers use goop to improve their grip and gives the strong impression that he feels Buchholz is doing just that.

Weirdest thing: he doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal. He doesn’t come down on it with any form of judgment, really, but just notes that it’s common for pitchers to do it. Indeed, the column almost seems dissonent. Like it needed one more paragraph in which Verducci actually says what he thinks about Buchholz cheating. But it never comes. Verducci just leaves it hanging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

cheating scumbag.  no wonder why PKFish likes him so much...they are both classless :D

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http://m.espn.go.com/general/blogs/blogpost?blogname=bostonred-sox&id=26979&city=boston

Hershiser: Buchholz not cheating

By ESPNBoston.com | May 3, 2013 2:39 PM

ESPN MLB analyst Orel Hershiser talked with Colin Cowherd today and the first topic they talked about was Clay Buchholz and the accusations by Blue Jays broadcasters Jack Morris and Dick Hayhurst that Buchholz was cheating during his start Wednesday night.

Here are some of the highlights from Hershiser, who defended Buchholz and said he didn’t think the Sox pitcher was cheating:

-- On whether he’d ever put rosin on his arm: “Yup, for sure ... Why, to get a better grip on the ball. The hitters even want to you to do it because they don’t want to get hit. There’s video of me pouring a cup of water over my head before I take the mound in the world series or any other game, where you just want moisture so that you can activate the rosin to get your hand sticky and there’s nothing wrong with having your hand sticky to get a grip on the baseball.”

-- Is it illegal: “It’s not illegal, it’s not even close to illegal.”

-- Was Buchholz cheating: “No I don’t think he’s cheating at all.”

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Clay Buchholz came under fire during his last start, being accused by media of throwing a spitball. But does the data bear that out? (USA Today Sports Images)

By Matthew Kory

It's still early in the baseball season, as every stathead (including myself) will tell you over and over and over until it's not early anymore, but so far one of the very best starting pitchers in baseball has been Boston's Clay Buchholz. He leads the league with both a 6-0 record and a 1.01 ERA. Buchholz has always had the stuff to strike batters out, but until this season he had never quite put it all together in the way that scouts thought he might. Put it this way: Through last season Buchholz had struck out a pedestrian 6.7 batters per nine innings. This season he's at 9.5.

There are a few things that point to Buchholz maybe not being quite this good, but until Thursday cheating by throwing a spitball wasn't one of them. And yet that was the topic du jour. Dirk Hayhurst, a Blue Jays announcer (who later mentioned it again over twitter), suggested that Buchholz had thrown a spitball during his demolition of the Jays in Toronto Wednesday. That accusation was supported by former pitcher (and Blue Jays broadcaster) Jack Morris. Said Morris, "I found out because the guys on the video camera showed it to me right after the game. I didn't see it during the game. They showed it to me and said, 'What do you think of this?' and I said, 'Well, he's throwing a spitter. Cause that's what it is.'"

When someone throws a spitter, they do it to get extra movement on their pitches. So, if they're doing it properly (and if not, really, who cares?) it should cause more or different movement on their pitches. There are two ways to investigate. The first is to see what the data says about at the action on Buchholz's pitches. The second is to watch the game again and see if there is anything suspicious. I did both.

After re-watching Buchholz's seven innings I can say that I didn't see anything that looked illegal (and no, I don't consider Hayhurt's tweet which showed Buchholz touching his arm to be evidence of anything illegal). However, just because I didn't see Buchholz do anything doesn't mean he didn't do anything. He very well might have, though I'd contend in that context it's as likely Buchholz was cheating as it was that Blue Jays starter Mark Buehrle was cheating. And judging from the results this season Buerhle has far more cause to cheat than Buchholz.

Be that as it may, the second way to check is to look at the PITCH f/x data. PITCH f/x is so sophisticated now that it charts the precise movement of each pitch.

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A quick note about spitballs: Spitballs are essentially fastballs with increased movement due to a knuckleball effect. Basically, the slippery substance applied to the ball, whatever it may be, causes the pitcher's fingers to slip off the ball in a controlled way (when you're doing it correctly). This makes it move in odd ways, almost like a much faster mini-knuckleball. Pitchers don't typically apply spitball technology to curveballs or change-ups or the like; those are pitches where losing your grip, even ever so slightly, wouldn't provide any benefit and indeed would likely prove a detriment. In any case, if Buchholz was cheating it would likely show up in his fastball data. So that's where I looked.

At first, I compared the movement on Buchholz's fastball this season to the movement on his fastball last season. Last season, 2012, his fastball moved on average 4.25 inches laterally in towards right-handed batters and 10.18 inches vertically. On average so far this season, his fastball has moved on average 3.43 inches laterally in towards right-handed batters and 11.04 inches vertically. That is a difference of -0.82 inches laterally --about an inch less of movement horizontally and about the same amount vertically. For context, Buchholz had a similar movement change horizontally and a far greater (3.70 inches) movement change vertically when comparing his 2011 with his 2012 seasons.

If you like pretty colored charts you can thank Brooks Baseball for this one, which shows the average horizontal movement on Clay Buchholz's pitches over his career (black is the fastball).

There's been generalized improvement over the seasons, but there doesn't appear to be much of a difference between Buchholz now and Buchholz 2012 in the horizontal movement any of his pitches. The same can be said vertically.

So looking at those numbers, there isn't anything that stands out as markedly different from his previous years. It should be noted that as pitchers move along in their careers their velocity tends to drop and often the movement on their pitches changes as well, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. But a pitchers' year-to-year PITCH f/x data is never static.

So if the difference between seasons doesn't appear suspicious, how about the difference between Buchholz's start in Toronto on Wednesday and his previous starts? Maybe he just started cheating -- though why he would do that, I have no idea, considering he came into the game with an ERA of 1.19. Still, I compared Buchholz's pitches on Wednesday to his pitches in his other five starts this season.

Without boring you with numbers any more than I already have, Buchholz's best horizontal fastball movement came in his first game in New York. His second best day in that department was in Toronto (again, this is out of only six games). Vertically, Buchholz had his worst day, getting the least movement on his pitches by an inch and a half. That doesn't say he wasn't cheating, but it does say that if he was, he wasn't cheating well.

Something else that backs up that particular statement is that in the seven innings Buchholz threw against Toronto, the Blue Jays only swung and missed at his fastball once. That's once out of 30 fastballs he threw. He also threw 20 cut fastballs (or cutters), but Jays hitters didn't miss those either, coming up empty only once on that pitch as well.

So Buchholz only got two swings and misses on pitches that Hayhurst and Morris are accusing him of cheating with. According to PITCH f/x, his movement wasn't abnormal, and in fact was subpar for his season as a whole, a fact born out by the contact made by Blue Jays hitters when they swung.

For his part, Buchholz had some logically sound reasons for doing the things that Hayhurst and Morris saw as cheating. The Boston Globe's Peter Abraham asked Buchholz about the accusations.

"Before every start, I pat rosin on my arm, go up and get stretched," Buchholz said. "They said I had something in my hair? It's the bottle of water I pour over me between each inning. They don't want you licking your fingers on the mound so it's a way to have moisture. I wipe it off every time I touch my hair."

"Every pitcher puts rosin on," Buchholz explained. "That's why it's there. It is what it is."

Asked if he was annoyed at Hayhurst he said, "I don't have any ill feelings against anybody. That's the way it works. I didn't do anything wrong."

There was also mentioned of a discolored sleeve on his undershirt. "I've been wearing the same red shirt under my uniform for three years," Buchholz said. "So it probably has a lot of stains on it. The water is dripping off my hair onto my uniform and I'm sweating. It makes the red color turn to a darker red.

None of this proves conclusively that Buchholz didn't cheat. About all we can say is that it doesn't appear from the data or the video that he was cheating, and if he was, he wasn't doing a very good job of it. As the Jays can attest, it would have been about the only thing he did that wasn't very good on Wednesday.

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the Verducci article clearly infers his location is much better due to a foreign substance on his left arm which is not on his right arm (so it isn't perspiration or water) and was not seen in 2012 when his ERA approached 5.00

very suspicious...be a homer though bro

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the Verducci article clearly infers his location is much better due to a foreign substance on his left arm which is not on his right arm (so it isn't perspiration or water) and was not seen in 2012 when his ERA approached 5.00

very suspicious...be a homer though bro

This has nothing to do with location, but continue to be uninformed bro.

It supposedly has more to do with movement and the many articles have shown that he doesn't have that much more movement than last season. And his ERA last season was high becuse he was coming off of an injury.

The bottom line is this: the accusations came from two broadcasters watching through video and pictures and no one from any other team or the Blue Jays themselves on the field. This steroid era has everyone shook to the point where if someone is doing well they must be cheating. It's pathetic to accuse Buchholz for cheating because the Jays are awful.

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the Verducci article clearly infers his location is much better due to a foreign substance on his left arm which is not on his right arm (so it isn't perspiration or water) and was not seen in 2012 when his ERA approached 5.00

very suspicious...be a homer though bro

 

Shocker you are taken the side of a Yankee apologist in Verducci.

 

What was seen? 

 

A pitcher that was coming back from a stress fracture in his back that ended his 2011 season and was not right until the second half after missing a month for his esphogatis issue.

 

And the ridiculousness is we are taking about a great month.    Not a season, but a month. 

 

This is not Brady Anderson going from 20 HRs to 50 over a whole season, but a pitcher that is finally healthy and has his pitching coach from when he had his best season back (17 wins 2.33 ERA).

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LMAO Like you're not.

 

the Verducci article clearly infers his location is much better due to a foreign substance on his left arm which is not on his right arm (so it isn't perspiration or water) and was not seen in 2012 when his ERA approached 5.00

very suspicious...be a homer though bro

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6 innings, 4 runs allowed

 

 

he's back to normal now that he got caught cheating :)

 

Because of one average start he's "back to normal"? You're not very bright, are you? No one thought he was going to go 33-0 with a 1.00 ERA. Obviously there are going to be some less than great starts here and there, it's the nature of the beast.

 

Oh, and you keep saying he got caught cheating. If that were the actual case would he not have gotten suspended or called into the league offices for a review? He was never accused by anyone actually playing the game and still hasn't been, troll.

 

Oh, and if you didn't notice the Red Sox still won.

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Because of one average start he's "back to normal"? You're not very bright, are you? No one thought he was going to go 33-0 with a 1.00 ERA. Obviously there are going to be some less than great starts here and there, it's the nature of the beast.

 

Oh, and you keep saying he got caught cheating. If that were the actual case would he not have gotten suspended or called into the league offices for a review? He was never accused by anyone actually playing the game and still hasn't been, troll.

 

Oh, and if you didn't notice the Red Sox still won.

Even if he got caught for doctoring the ball he wouldn't be suspended based on a video...

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  • 1 year later...

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