Walker Buehler Frustrated By Up And Down Outing

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Walker Buehler was starting to find his footing coming into Wednesday against the Houston Astros.

At the end of June, Buehler had a 6.45 ERA in 14 starts. He wasn’t throwing strikes and consistently failed to get through five innings.

More recently, Buehler made some tweaks to get back on track. Entering Wednesday’s game, he had a 3.27 ERA over his previous six starts. The Red Sox were 5-1 in those games.

Buehler surrendered a leadoff home run to Jeremy Pena, followed by a second run in the 1st inning, but buckled down after that. He got through the next four innings unscathed and looked to be on his way to another quality start.

In the sixth inning, he recorded two quick outs but issued a two-out walk to Victor Caratini and then hung a sweeper that Yanier Diaz took out of the park. Buehler’s final line reads six innings, four earned runs, four hits, four walks and three strikeouts.

Besides the first inning and the last, Buehler threw the ball well. He used all seven of his pitches, with none accounting for more than 25% of his total arsenal. His four-seam fastball showed more signs of life as well, generating three whiffs on 22 pitches. He’s struggled to get fastball whiffs this season, but the pitch has started to improve recently. Still, a few too many mistakes hurt Buehler’s final line.

“Tough one,” Buehler said. “There was a lot of 92 [mph] in there and kinda moving the ball around, but pitching a little bit and making a lot of pitches when I felt like I needed to, and you kinda lose it there in the sixth at the end. Just frustrating.”

On the other hand, Red Sox manager Alex Cora was happy with his starter’s performance.

“He threw the ball well,” Cora said. “He gave us a chance to win.”

While Buehler hasn’t been the most reliable starter, he did put the Red Sox in a position to win the game. Unfortunately, he was up against Hunter Brown, one of the best pitchers in baseball, and the offense couldn’t get more than one run across the board. The Red Sox lost to the Astros, 4-1.