BOSTON: Starting pitchers Josh Tomlin and Clay Buchholz have competed before in their baseball careers. Just never on this big of a stage.
Tomlin and Buchholz had their paths first cross at Angelina College in Texas, where they competed for a spot at shortstop.
“He [Buchholz] ended up coming in, but he ended up playing right field and I played short,” Tomlin told reporters at Fenway Park on Saturday. “He was probably a better pitcher than I was at the time, so he was a starter and in the days he didn’t start, he played right and I played short. … It was a friendly competition.”
That was more than a decade ago. On Sunday, the two will face off in Game 3 of the American League Division Series at 4 p.m. in Boston. It’ll be Tomlin’s first career postseason start, with the Indians holding a 2-0 lead in the series and needing one more win to advance to the American League Championship Series.
Tomlin and Buchholz have also shared somewhat similar 2016 seasons, both with severe high and low points. Buchholz finished the season 8-10 with a 4.78 ERA after making 21 starts and 37 total appearances. After a rough four months, he figured things out in August, posting a 2.86 ERA for the month and following it up with a 3.14 ERA in September.
As Buchholz figured things out, Tomlin’s season was slipping away from him, and the Indians went to work trying to figure out the cause. It was revealed that he had flipped his fastball-cutter usage among other things. He was paying for those mistakes and was taken out of the rotation.
But like Buchholz, Tomlin was strong heading into October by posting a 1.69 ERA in September. And due to injuries to starting pitchers Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, Tomlin graduated from losing his spot in the rotation to ALDS Game 3 starting pitcher in the span of a few weeks. He finished the season with a 13-9 record and 4.40 ERA in 174 innings.
“The idea was to kind of give him maybe a little bit of a break,” Indians manager Terry Francona said. “I don’t think that’s doing [it] justice, though, when you say like a mental break.
“I think what he actually did was he dug in and tried to figure out, ‘OK, what makes me a good pitcher and why?’ … And I think it happens when maybe you’re starting to miss your spots or you get hit a little bit and you’re trying to get through an inning, and it had gotten a little bit reversed. This gave him a chance to recognize that and since he’s come back, he’s been the guy that we have seen, since he was in the rotation last year, one of the better pitchers in the American League.”
For the Indians, Tomlin could be their ticket to the ALCS. For the Red Sox, Buchholz is their last chance to extend the series and force a Game 4. More than a decade later, they’re still competing.
Ryan Lewis can be reached at rlewis@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Indians blog at www.ohio.com/indians. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RyanLewisABJ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RyanLewisABJ
