I don’t know. Perhaps I’m the problem.

This fact makes it even weirder that I am much more fond of Clay Buchholz than your typical Red Sox fan. If any athlete’s career could be described as a roller coaster ride, it’s his. There’s no telling what you’re going to get from him in any given season. Hell, on any given pitch.

This season has followed the same pattern, and his latest uphill ride* has people thinking about his future. Specifically, the question of whether or not the team should and/or will execute Buchholz’s $13.5 million option for the 2017 season.

The way I see it, there are three ways this could go down. Let’s look at the arguments for each of them.

*Are his good stretches the uphill part or the downhill part? Food for thought.

Void the Option

For the majority of the 2016 season, this seemed like the obvious decision. Sure, coming into the year, we all (or just me, whatever) figured that he’d at least pitch well enough to earn this option. I mean, $13.5 million isn’t that much money in baseball terms.

Well, Buchholz saw those assumptions, laughed, poured six gallons of water over his head and pitched to a 5.91 ERA while allowing an .830 OPS to his opponents over the first half. It was pretty clear early on that we were watching Bad Buchholz this season. Even with his recent stretch, the righty has a 5.36 FIP, a 5.51 DRA and a 124 cFIP. Basically, there are no good things that can be said about the bulk of Buchholz’s season.

In addition to the miserable performance, it’s starting to look like the Red Sox might have a legitimate rotation of five arms that are all locked up for the near future. David Price, Steven Wright, Rick Porcello, Drew Pomeranz and Eduardo Rodriguez isn’t going to be the best rotation in baseball, but it’s a solid enough group.

As such, Boston might not really need Buchholz next year. On the other hand, they may need the $13.5 million. While it’s not that much money for a baseball team and the Red Sox should be able to afford that plus a productive offseason, the reality is every team has a budget. Whether you think the Red Sox should be close to their budget at this point (I don’t) doesn’t change the fact they probably are. Unfortunately, they’ll need to allocate some resources for the bullpen again. Plus, they may need to address their corner infield situation depending on their feelings towards Travis Shaw, Yoan Moncada, Sam Travis, Hanley Ramirez and possibly even Pablo Sandoval.

Execute The Option and Keep Him

This is the option that is starting to pick up some steam against all odds. Really, the argument is coming due to his last three starts, but his entire second half is worth considering. While much of the second-half work has come out of the bullpen, he has looked like a different pitcher since the break. After Tuesday’s masterful outing, he has a 3.00 ERA in the second half while allowing a .664 OPS. The most important improvement has been his newfound ability to limit home runs. After allowing a whopping 17 homers in the first half, Buchholz has yet to give up a long ball since the break.

The obvious issue is that the rotation is theoretically full next year, as I discussed above. Of course, the old saying goes that you can never have too much pitching. Someone is going to get hurt, or just plain suck, and the Red Sox will need their depth. Buchholz can be that depth. As I’ve alluded to many times already, they have the money to keep him even if he’s not a lock for the rotation. Hell, he could be part of the bullpen solution that they will be searching for this winter. There’s even a chance he could start the year in the rotation again if they trade another one of the presumptive starters to help the rest of their roster.

Execute the Option and Trade Him

This is the “just right” option of the three for all you Goldilocks And The Three Bears fans out there. The biggest key to remember about all this is that the upcoming free-agent market for starting pitchers is an absolute joke. Rich Hill is the best pitcher, and while he’s shown some real talent, he’s also going to be 37 next year and can’t stay on the mound. He just finished recovering from a blister that apparently ate his entire hand. After him, we have guys like Jeremy Hellickson, Andrew Cashner, Ivan Nova and maybe James Shields. That’s gross, to put it analytically.

Teams will always be looking for starting pitching, and while Buchholz might not be better than those options, only paying him for one year at $13.5 million is likely a better option than handing any of the names above a multi-year deal. Boston wouldn’t get back a star in this kind of trade, of course, but they could get some legitimate bullpen help back. Keep in mind: Wade Miley fetched Carson Smith. Perhaps if the free agent market gets really out of hand, they could even get that corner infield help. Of course, all of this hinges on Buchholz being productive and healthy for the rest of the year.

***

The truth is it’s too early to choose any of these options right now. That’s the boring, obvious answer, but it’s the only logical one. Three good starts and eight strong relief appearances doesn’t wipe away what Buchholz did for the majority of the season. Plus, before Tuesday’s outing in Tampa, he had a pretty ugly 9:4 K:BB ratio in 20 innings in the second half, making his strong stretch a little suspect.

On the other hand, there are some real changes Buccholz has made with the help of Brian Bannister.

Right now, I think I am leaning towards the first option. It’s easy to look at the recent numbers and think that Buchholz is back, but it’s not nearly enough to wipe away the memories of the first half. If the Red Sox need more pitching depth, they can probably find a cheaper option, albeit with less upside.

With that being said, if he continues to look like the guy he was on Tuesday, that opinion could quickly change. And at the end of the day, Buchholz finishing strong enough to have his option picked up would be the most Buchholz thing of all time.

Photo by USA Today Sports Images

To few people’s surprise, they’ve announced that Roenis Elias will be that replacement.

This is undoubtedly good news for Elias, but him winning this spot is more faint praise than anything else. I mean, his competition was Joe Kelly, Clay Buchholz (who has six walks and three strikeouts in 6.1 innings out of the bullpen) and Henry Owens. However, as underwhelming as his current competition is, Elias has proven to be as solid as he is unspectacular as a starter in his relatively short career.

Prior to getting the call to Boston, the now-27-year-old spent two years in Seattle serving as something close to a full-time starter. To wit, 49 of his 51 appearances came as a starter, including all 29 of his appearances in 2014. His performance was nothing to write home about — something that should be obvious considering he was the secondary piece in the Wade Miley deal — but he was a perfectly acceptable back-end hurler. In both these seasons, he pitched to adjusted ERA’s just slightly below the league average with peripherals to match that kind of performance.

Elias has proven to be as solid as he is unspectacular as a starter in his relatively short career.

The underwhelming existence that is Roenis Elias: Starting pitcher doesn’t just end with the numbers, either. In order to produce these slightly below-average numbers, he relies on a fastball/curveball/changeup mix. If you were told to dream up the most boring starting pitcher repertoire, I’d be willing to bet that’s the mix you’d pick.

This isn’t meant to be an insult, either, because it led to solid strikeout numbers at least. Unfortunately, the pitch he worked off most of the time — his fastball — is also his worst pitch. The heater sits in the low-to-mid nineties, but doesn’t induce whiffs or ground balls. At the same time, a higher rate of line drives are hit off the pitch than any of his others. Again, this isn’t a particularly uncommon occurrence for someone of Elias’ caliber, but it helps paint the picture of who he is.

To his credit, his secondaries have been much more effective over his career. Both pitches boast whiff-per-swing rates over 32 percent (per Brooks Baseball) and they both induce ground balls on over half of balls put in play against them. These two pitches are the reason he’s able to maintain a strikeout rate slightly above the league-average starter, coming in slightly under eight K’s per nine innings.

Guys with this kind of strikeout rate can certainly excel at the highest level, but they need at least plus command. Elias…well, Elias doesn’t even have average command. He’s had a tremendous amount of trouble with control over his career, walking roughly a full batter per nine innings more than the league-average starter. The issue is quite simple: He can’t hit the strike zone. He’s had little problem drawing swings on pitches out of the zone — though he’s not elite in this area, either — but that can’t outweigh zone rate. While the middle of the pack in zone rate is typically around 48-to-49 percent, Elias is all the way down at 45 percent over his career.

It’s not just the walks, either, as he’s had plenty of problems with the long ball. Despite pitching in Safeco Park and other pitcher-friendly ballparks out west, he’s allowed exactly one home run per nine innings over his career. That’s a rate that could be expected to rise as he shifts to the American League East, especially if he can’t find a way to keep the ball further down in the zone. For whatever it’s worth, that hasn’t been the case in Triple-A given his 0.9 HR/9 rate with Pawtucket.

So, he’s solid with strikeouts, just average with home runs despite pitching in pitcher-friendly environments and bad with walks. All of this mediocrity leads me to two possibly contradictory points. The first is that Elias is fine, assuming it’s roughly what the Red Sox can expect moving forward. If he can go about five innings per start and allow three or four runs more often than not, the Red Sox can live with that. The most important thing for Elias — and the rest of Boston’s pitchers — is avoiding blow-up outings. We know Buchholz and Kelly haven’t been able to do that, and it takes Boston’s biggest asset — it’s high-powered offense — out of the game too early. Of course, blow-up is a vague term, but if we define it as allowing five runs or more (an admittedly crude and arbitrary definition) Elias’ history is encouraging.

Just 18 percent of his career starts fit this definition.

The other side of this coin is that such subpar performance can’t be acceptable for the rest of the season. Elias’ mediocre pitching is fine for a team trying to make it through to the trade deadline, but contending teams in August and September need to do better than that. This is particularly true for a rotation that includes Steven Wright, who always seems like a risk to turn back into a pumpkin, Rick Porcello, who has looked more like 2015 Porcello lately, and Eduardo Rodriguez who hasn’t lived up to his potential thus far this year.

Elias’ mediocre pitching is fine for a team trying to make it through to the trade deadline, but contending teams in August and September need to do better than that.

Whether they find that replacement internally (unlikely) or externally (very likely), Elias probably can’t be a starter for a team in a tight playoff race, barring injuries. Again, this is nothing against him, because there is value to having players like Elias on the roster, but this Red Sox team will need better eventually.

Finding a better starter would also allow Elias to be unleashed in the bullpen, where he could provide some real value. There’s not a ton of data with him pitching in short stints, but the hope would be that his stuff plays up enough for his ability to garner strikeouts to mask his command issues. Even if it doesn’t, he’s had plenty of success against left-handed hitters over his career. For instance, he allowed a .231 TAv against lefties in 2015 compared to a .282 mark against righties. For a Red Sox team relying on Tommy Layne and Robbie Ross as the left-handed relief options right now, Elias would be a welcome change.

That’s looking too far down the road, though. Elias is going to take the hill for his first start in a Red Sox uniform on Friday, and it likely won’t be his last based on his competition. He’s not going to be anyone’s favorite pitcher, but he’ll be fine for now. The strikeouts will keep him in games, but the command will keep him from dominating.

As with just about every player, it all comes down to expectations. If you just hope for Elias to keep the team in games, history shows he can serve that role. Just don’t look for anything more.

Photo by Troy Taormina/USA Today Sports Images

Photo by David Butler II/USA Today Sports Images