Surprised to not see a thread for Clay Buchholz for 2008.

So, here we go.

He's good. One bad pitch and no offense behind him cost him a game today. But, at least he isn't out there "taking his lumps" as he would with some clubs. Terry has handled him with kid gloves thus far, I would say, and he's responded well with two great outings. And he has had some bumps, but so have all of our pitchers.

Anywho, rambling me. Discuss Clay here.

Clay's still on the learning curve, but flashes of brilliance like Saturday's outing against the Rays show just how high his ceiling is. Ideally, he could have gotten a wee bit more seasoning in AAA over the first part of this season, but doing it with a B on his cap doesn't seem to be hurting much.

I'm certainly glad he is not pitching for the Twins.

I was disappointed he ran out of innings before the PS last year because I thought he was arguably the second best starting P on the team. (That was partly due to my confidence in hm and partly due to my lack of confidence in DiceK's command and Schill's stuff at that point). Now I have no doubt he'll emerge as the No. 2 starter here in 2008, if he hasn't already.

He has three plus pitches, can throw them all for strikes and competes hard. I look forward to watching his starts a lot more than DiceK's marathon, five-inning, 100-pitch outings.

I sure hope he develops into our #2 pitcher. He sure has the talent and the stuff for it. I just don't see Lester as any thing more than a #5 pitcher.

Don't be so quick to throw Lester under the bus. LHPs with his kind of stuff are pretty rare and sometimes take a little longer to develop.

Having said all that, watching Buchholz's curve is fun. When it's on, it is easily one of the best in MLB. The fact that he sets it up with an excellent heater and change is just gravy.

I think Lester could develop into a 3-4 myself. The problem is that he walks way too many people but he should be serviceable.

Clay pitched a great game and although I didn't get to see it he obviously had it working last night. Its too bad that he got the loss, he should be getting easy wins with this offense.

Again...stop with the megathreads. Please pick a FOCUS for this thread so this doesn't turn into 237 pages of nonsense by the end of the season. Everyone has been begging for megathreads to die, there is a sticky thread about this at the top of the page, please help us out and change the title to narrow it down.

- TLB

edit - needed way cool mod font

Given Buchholz's repertoire, it would be interesting to follow his pitch breakdowns over the course of the season. For instance, how many changeups is he throwing start to start. I'd have to believe that number will vary, with feel being at least as big of a determiner as matchups.