Buchholz is able to enjoy this 'anniversary'
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PORTLAND, Maine - Failure always had been foreign to Clay Buchholz, and, at 21, he saw no reason why it wouldn't stay that way forever. He shredded Double A to the point that his pitching coach there later said, "a bad outing for him was 10 or 12 strikeouts in six innings." He made Pawtucket an eight-start speed bump. He fired a no-hitter in his second major league start.
Yesterday morning, Buchholz spent the first anniversary of that no-hitter back in Double A Portland, playing toss in right field before the Sea Dogs' final game of the regular season. Buchholz, 22, has been here since Aug. 20 after the first difficult patch of his career: a season in which he compiled a 2-9 record and 6.75 ERA that ended when the Baltimore Orioles - the same team he no-hit last season - clobbered him. Failure, he learned, is hardest to deal with when you don't see it coming.
"It's hard to go through a phase where you have nothing but success, and then the next phase you go through, it's nothing but failure," Buchholz said. "That's basically what this year comes down to. It's been hard. I've never gone through adversity like this. That's going to definitely make you better."
Buchholz reported to the Sea Dogs in Altoona, Pa., 11 days ago. He met manager Arnie Beyeler and pitching coach Mike Cather, the man who knows his mechanics better than anyone in the organization, in the dugout.
"You could just kind of see that things were bothering him," Beyeler said. "He had confidence issues. Who wouldn't have them? He was getting beat up for a couple months up there."
Buchholz, both men knew, needed to make sense of adversity before he could defeat it.
"He got a lot off his chest," Cather said.
When the conversation ended, Buchholz told them, "I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to dominate."
"It kind of took me off-guard, because it was kind of neat to hear that," Beyeler said. "He's got that swagger again. He didn't have it that day. But it was in there."
That swagger had been missing since all season. Buchholz rose to the majors, Cather said, "on stuff alone. He's a better pitcher now, and a more complete pitcher, than he was when he got up. You can see from his experience, he's learned a ton while he's been up there. For as negative as a lot of people have viewed his year, how much he's developed is very apparent."
Buchholz ascended by pitching naturally. He rifled 95-mile per hour fastballs early in the count, then used 0-and-1 and 0-and-2 counts to make hitters chase low curves and changeups that darted out of the strike zone.
Superior talent and scouting caught up with Buchholz. He grew afraid of what might happen if his fastball was hit or he missed the strike zone with an offspeed pitch. As his confidence crumbled, the quality of his pitches disintegrated. He nibbled the strike zone early in at-bats, and hitters lambasted his fastballs in favorable counts. He stood on the mound thinking about base runners, the score, his mechanics, everything.
"I felt like I had confidence, then I'd get out there and I'd just tense up," Buchholz said. "It's hard to execute pitches when you have 10,000 things running through your mind."
In Portland, after working with Cather, he reverted to his natural style and pushed thoughts out of his mind. He allowed three runs in the third inning of his first start, but he kept pounding fastballs, lasted seven innings and gave up no more earned runs.
Buchholz sat in the dugout during a game shortly after his first start, peered down the bench at Cather and called him. Cather wondered why. He ambled over and sat down next to Buchholz.
"Man," Buchholz said. "I have not felt this comfortable in about a year."
"What do you think it is?" Cather replied.
"I don't know," Buchholz said. "I just feel like I'm in control again. I feel like I'm at peace almost."
"I kind of got that feeling that he discovered something," Cather said yesterday. "To me, that's what's important. A lot of times, somebody gets tested and they go in their shell. He has not gone in his shell. There's a lot of fight left in him."
Said Buchholz, "Now that I'm down here, it's sort of the way I pitched last year when I went up. I didn't think anybody was going to hit me. If they did, oh well. Get the next batter. That's always the mind-set I want to have.
"I don't blame [the Red Sox] for doing what they did. It's not about development up there. It's about winning. What they're doing right now, it's working. If I get a chance to go back up there, I'm going to take it for all it's worth."
Buchholz made his second start in Portland Saturday night. He zipped fastballs at hitters with abandon, twirled curveballs and changeups without fear. Two hitters reached in eight innings. Ten struck out. None scored.
He remembers the first thing that entered his head that day when he walked on to the rubber.
"I don't think these guys are going to hit me," he thought.
Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe
