Are the Sox making Buchholz look bad?

Sam Galanis
Contributing Writer

After six weeks, the Clay Buchholz saga is only getting messier. And Gary Tanguay of Comcast Sportsnet’s Uno Sports Tonight suggested that maybe the Red Sox aren’t helping the situation much.

"I think they did make him look bad," Tanguay said in the broadcast. "Farrell says this is on him now, he's got to pitch through it. Basically they're telling him to take off the dress and get to it."

Buchholz’s story has flip-flopped between progress and setbacks, possible structural damage and no apparent injury. But Buchholz surprised everyone when he went off on his own to get an opinion from the renowned Dr. James Andrews. Andrews confirmed what the Red Sox medical team said, that continuing to pitch won’t cause any damage.

AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

So who’s to blame here? In Buchholz’s defense, we’re not major league pitchers. When your entire career is based on whether or not you can throw the ball, it’s probably tough to believe that you’re not causing any damage to your body when you don’t feel 100-percent when you pitch. Plus, the Red Sox medical staff doesn’t have a perfect success rate themselves.

With everybody giving their two cents about how he should just suck it up and get out there, it certainly doesn’t make him look good. And as the Boston Globe’s Chris Gasper pointed out in the broadcast, Buchholz “is kind of a cautious guy to begin with.”

The real issue is the fact that it took Buchholz six weeks to go out for a second opinion. If he didn’t trust what the medical staff was saying, he shouldn’t have waited so long. They weren’t going to tell him to go to Dr. Andrews. He should have made that decision himself a few weeks ago. And he dug himself an even deeper hole when he said at the All-Star Game that if it were September he’d be pitching.

So basically, Buchholz and the Red Sox both aren’t helping the situation. Buchholz has already done himself in with all the waiting, but the Red Sox throwing him under the bus doesn’t help much either. But I’m sure that I’m not alone in thinking that the Sox will be much better off when all of the finger-pointing is done and Buchholz is back on the mound.

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