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Friday, August 17th.
Clay Buchholz vs. John Lackey, 1 PM EST.
Josh Beckett vs. Ervin "The Road Warrior" (7.16 career ERA on the road, 3.16 at home--- incredible) Santana, 7 PM EST.

Saturday, August 18th.
Curt Schilling vs. Jered Weaver, 7 PM EST.

Sunday, August 19th.
Tim Wakefield vs. Joe Saunders, 2 PM EST.

That could possibly be the worst error I've seen....other than the time Wily Mo gave up the homer.

what a class act that JD Drew is. what a class act. you cats that are lucky enough to watch- please fill in as much as you can. im at work missing Clay's first start.

Solid inning for Clay. His changeup is disgustingly good. Should've been no runs, can't believe Drew dropped that.

i hear that "big papi" cat is pretty good. must be the vitamin water. seriously, i feel like the world has forgotten just how good big papi is this year.

Well, Drew makes up for that horrid error, at least. RBI triple then scores a run on Lowell's single. 4-1 Sox.

Dougie almost goes deep. 5-1 sox

Double for Cora...6-1 sox.

Mirabelli comes up limping after rounding 3rd

how is clay looking- whats his pitch limit tonight?

alwayslovetheceltics wrote:how is clay looking- whats his pitch limit tonight?

I'd imagine around 100 pitches. He looks pretty good. A little wild but that is expected from a kid making his MLB debut.

His curveball and changeup both are filthy. Don't know why Varitek keeps calling for so many fastballs when his command of his curve and change is better than his command of his fastball. They can't even touch Clay's off-speed stuff today.

I tell you, Buchholz reminds me of Mussina. He doesn't have his fastball commmand, but he has everything else.

cmaff051 wrote:I tell you, Buchholz reminds me of Mussina. He doesn't have his fastball commmand, but he has everything else.

I rarely agree with the soxprospects player comparisons, but I think the Cole Hamels comparison is my favorite Clay comparison. Little worse changeup (still great), little better curve.

edit: Clay's changeup is just FILTHY today. He just completely owned Matthews Jr.

**** 5th inning. 3 cheap hits and another one that wasn't exactly crushed (relatively hard hit grounder by Vlad). 7-3 with 2 on and 1 out.

edit: HUGE DP there. He can probably go one more inning because of it, too.

Well, he did give up some hard hit balls in the first few innings that were caught (the Lowell double play, for example). It all evens out in the end.

Like that one right there. All evens out in the end. It's really funny how baseball works. He gives up 2 cheap hits that find holes and a ball that was absolutely scalded was caught.

cmaff051 wrote:Well, he did give up some hard hit balls in the first few innings that were caught (the Lowell double play, for example). It all evens out in the end.

True, but you usually don't see 4 in a row. Kind of annoying when it does happen 4 in a row (or 3, Vlad's wasn't really cheap).

Buchholz doesn't look so hot today, but he's still going to go 6+. Pretty cool stuff.

Yeah, he is pretty damn efficient for a strikeout pitcher. Was pretty wild early on, walked 3 and still could've gone 7 innings and had a pretty reasonable pitch count. They obviously don't need that extra inning out of him when they are limiting his innings and have a deep pen, but only 91 pitches through 6 while putting on a lot of baserunners is very impressive.

This one looks like we have a good chance to sweep the doubleheader, hopefully they won't crap the bed later tonight like they did in the D-Rays finale.

Looks like Kevin Cash will be added to the team for Game 2. Maybe he even gets the start if he gets to the field on time?

I didn't catch the game today, but as someone who has seen James Shields pitch numerous times, from a RHP perspective, how good is Clay's? I know Santana and Hamels have devestating changeups, but they're both lefties. Shields had, IMHO, far and away the best righty changeup in the the AL before Bucholz came along, so I'm trying to get a feel on how good that pitch really is. I've never seen him pitch, but I've heard his change is really good.