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.

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Given the cost of acquiring Pomeranz and how good this team is offensively, it’s tempting to believe this means the Red Sox should be done. They now have a reasonable top-four in their rotation, and might even go five deep if the Eduardo Rodriguez we saw in New York is the E-Rod we’ll get moving forward. Their offense is crazy good. Their bullpen is good enough, and could be a genuine plus if a few guys can stay healthy at once. The Red Sox’s current playoff odds stand at 79.9%, and we have every reason to believe this is a team that can make it to October, and might be able to play deep into that month.

I still think they should trade for Julio Teheran.

Teheran will cost a lot to acquire. He’s going to cost way more than just one of the remaining Big Three prospects, and he should. Teheran is 25 years old, is signed affordably through 2019 with an option for 2020 and, per PWARP, has had the 12th-best season of any starter this year (one spot ahead of Pomeranz, interestingly enough). He may not be an ace in the Chris Sale or Jose Fernandez sense, but he’s a really good, really young pitcher, and he’s probably available.

Despite the cost it will probably take to get him, there are a bunch of reasons Teheran is pretty much the perfect fit for this team right now. While the Red Sox shouldn’t completely mortgage their future to acquire him, he’d go a long way toward addressing the organization’s biggest deficiency. Before you yell at me, let’s review:

Teheran is good

I alluded to this above, but Teheran, by any objective measure, is really good. He’s sporting a 2.96 ERA, 3.03 DRA, 22.8 K%, 5.3 BB% and 40.2 GB% in 118.2 innings this season. He’s a former top prospect who was also pretty good in 2013 and really good in 2014. He was meh last year, which seems to be the primary reason people are worried about acquiring him. But he has the pedigree, past performance and age of a pitcher who should be capable of throwing near the top of a rotation for many years. Those guys are hard to come by.

The one legit gripe I see with Teheran is that he’s a fly-ball pitcher who’s already surrendering 1.21 HR/9 in Atlanta. That’s almost certainly going to go up in Fenway. My counter to this: show me all the good, young available pitchers on the market right now. They don’t exist. Just because Teheran isn’t perfect doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a marked improvement over most arms in the Red Sox system. Maybe he’s more of a no. 3 in the AL than a no. 2, but Teheran isn’t going to go from an All-Star in Atlanta to a scrub in Boston.

Teheran is cheap and cost-controlled

Back when the Braves were good, they locked up a significant portion of their core to team-friendly contract extensions. That didn’t stop them from shipping away Craig Kimbrel or Andrelton Simmons, and it shouldn’t stop them from trading Teheran, who signed a six-year, $32.4 million extension with the Braves before the 2014 season. He’s also got an affordable option for 2020, meaning the Red Sox could acquire Teheran’s age-25-through-age-30 seasons, which is pretty much exactly when you want to have a pitcher in your service. Teheran has also proven capable of staying on the mound and eating innings, averaging 202.1 IP over the past three years.

The best part about the Pomeranz deal, as I wrote in my TA at the mothersite, is that he’s under control for two more seasons beyond this one. That’s really important, because the Red Sox are looking at a solid three-to-four year window in which they should be competing for championships. Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. won’t be expensive yet during this window. David Price, Rick Porcello, Pomeranz, Kimbrel and Carson Smith should all be reasonable contributors during this time. Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi are poised to join that core by around this time next season. Plus, the Red Sox have solid complimentary players in Steven Wright, Blake Swihart, Hanley Ramirez, Brock Holt, Travis Shaw and Dustin Pedroia under control, too.

The Red Sox have offense, they have a few good starters and they have back-end bullpen arms. But in adding Teheran, they could build out a good, young rotation that will perfectly compliment their impressive offensive core for the next handful of seasons. That’s important for two reasons, the first of which is:

The Red Sox stink at developing starting pitching

I covered this in depth in my TA, but to rehash: the Red Sox can’t develop starters! Matt Barnes has turned into a solid reliever, but he can’t start. Brandon Workman flopped in the rotation. Henry Owens’s control has taken a step back when it already needed to take two steps forward. Brian Johnson’s had trouble staying on the mound. Allen Webster flopped. Rubby De La Rosa stunk. Felix Doubront was only good for half a season. Michael Bowden busted. Trey Ball is headed in that direction. The Red Sox are good at a lot of things as an organization, but bringing along home-grown starters isn’t one of them.

There’s still time for Owens and Johnson. Maybe one of them figures it out and becomes a back-end arm. There’s value in that, but Teheran figures to bring a whole lot more to the table; better performance and more certainty. When you can’t develop pitching, you need to either trade for it or sign it. Which brings us to the next point …

There are almost no good starters on the market

The 2017 class of free-agent starters is a god damn tire fire. You’re looking at guys like Brett Anderson, Rich Hill, C.J. Wilson, Ivan Nova, Jeremy Hellickson and Doug Fister at the top of the class. There’s no one even close to Teheran available.

In terms of targeting a different arm than Teheran to trade for, ok. That’s reasonable. But who’s out there? Sale and Fernandez shouldn’t be available. The A’s have no reason to sell low on Sonny Gray, nor the Rays on Chris Archer (who might not even be as good as Teheran). Zack Greinke’s contract would be pretty tough to swallow if the D-Backs would even be willing to move him. The Indians are in the thick of things and have no reason to sell Corey Kluber, Danny Salazar or Carlos Carrasco.  It’s not a buyer’s market.

The Red Sox have the prospect depth

The final point is the most painful one, because I, like the rest of you, like to hug my prospects close and tuck them in at night. But the point of amassing prospects isn’t to ensure that all of them reach the big-league club; it’s to use them in any way that can contribute to the on-field product. Often times that means making room for them on the MLB roster, but it can also mean trading them to acquire talent that fits better.

Dave Dombrowski clearly knows this, having traded away three top-100 prospects in Espinoza, Manuel Margot and Javier Guerra for Pomeranz and Kimbrel. Losing that type of talent hurts, but the crazy thing about Boston’s farm system is they still have the pieces needed to get Teheran, or at the very last to try.

Here’s where it gets tricky; I’m 100% sure I would not move Moncada for Teheran, and I’m 90% sure I wouldn’t move Benintendi for him either. If the Braves insist on one of those two to start the package — a demand they’d be well within their right to make — I have no problem with the Red Sox holding serve and looking for a cheaper upgrade or praying E-Rod turns it around.  

But I don’t think it’s crazy to think the Red Sox could start a package with Rafael Devers and Eduardo Rodriguez and build from there. Consider the Shelby Miller trade from earlier this season. The Braves received a top-25 prospect in Dansby Swanson, a reasonable everyday player in Ender Inciarte and a top-100 arm in Aaron Blair for Miller, who pitched much better than Teheran did last year but who doesn’t come with Teheran’s insanely team-friendly contract. 

Odds are the Braves would be looking for something similar for Teheran, and I think the Red Sox can match. Devers would be Swanson in this case, a mid-minors top-25 bat with impact potential. E-Rod could take the place of Inciarte as a young, MLB-ready piece right now. And Henry Owens could serve here as Aaron Blair, giving the Braves another young arm to try and groom (seriously, they love young arms).

Maybe the Red Sox also throw in a Mauricio Dubon (sorry Collins) or a Pat Light or a Travis Lakins. If that’s what it takes to get Teheran while holding onto Moncada and Benintendi, so be it.

The Red Sox have the opportunity to make a very competitive offer for Teheran without gutting the core pieces that should contribute to their future.

The Braves could decide such a package isn’t enough. Maybe another pitching-needy team like the Blue Jays or Rangers or Dodgers will come knocking and blow the Braves away with a bevvy of young talent. Maybe Atlanta will decide they want to hold on to Teheran as they rebuild, even though they’re probably at least two years away from contention. If this is the case, so be it.

But the Red Sox have the opportunity to make a very competitive offer without gutting the core pieces that should contribute to their future. At the very least, it’s an opportunity they should explore. A rotation of Price, Teheran, Wright, Pomeranz and Porcello wouldn’t just be respectable; it would be objectively good. And it could be good for the next several seasons while leaving the Red Sox with enough money to go get another arm should a starter go down with injury or underperform.

Pairing that type of a rotation with the Red Sox’s young, offensive core will give them the type of young, cost-controlled, high-upside team every fan dreams of rooting for. And while Boston’s minor league depth will suffer as a result, they’d still have the pieces to make marginal upgrades thanks to players like Sam Travis, Michael Kopech, Jason Groome and others. The point of a good farm system isn’t to win offseason org rankings; it’s to help the big-league squad win.

Teheran is not a “true ace,” is not the best fit for Fenway Park and would cost a fortune in talent. He’s also good, young, has upside remaining and can provide the Red Sox the one thing they need and can’t develop on their own; quality starting pitching. It would be a risky move for Boston, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

When you have a young core this good, it’s time to venture.

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