Clay Buchholz was phenomenal tonight - 9 K's, 2 walks, 3 hits (one of which wasn't really), all in 8.1 IP. The offense didn't give him a lot of support, but he dealt with it and gets the arbitrary "W." The sad part about this game is that he almost got no credit for after Hideki Okajima allowed Buch's last batter to score along with another run. Paps managed to shut it down with minimal additional drama, for once, and we all logged off the Game Thread happy (aside from some little issues with a heated debate and a cranky old guy). And now, for a in-depth look at Buch's dominance, in the form of a few Pitch F/X graphs.

First off, the trajectories:

Brilliant breaking stuff, and nice cut on the two-seamer. Very straight change, too. How was his location?

Glove side fastballs, curves breaking all across the zone, lots of changeups just below the zone. Good work, kid. How nasty was the stuff?

I <3 Buch's curve - that's just unfair. His change looks a lot like his fastball, but with less horizontal movement, like I mentioned looking at his trajectories. Another thing I noticed - last time he had an issue with showing his curve by throwing it from a bit higher than other pitches. Looks like that's still there:

They're spreading out though, so maybe he's working towards making them mix in with the others. Besides that, this is probably one of the best outings we've seen from Buch - ever. Keep it up, kid.