Every which Clay

By his own admission, Clay Buchholz had seen this nightmare before.

Staked to a comfortable lead, the Red Sox righty looked anything but on Monday night as he could not get three outs with a five-run lead to earn the win.

It was on Aug. 2 in Baltimore when Buchholz was staked to a lead of 7-0 but gave up six runs in the third. The Red Sox came back with seven runs in the fourth and it appeared Buchholz was in line for the easy win when he got through the fourth inning. But he could not retire a batter in the fifth and was yanked after three batters and did not get the win.

On Monday night against the White Sox, the Red Sox made up a 4-1 deficit with a six-run third and added two more in the fourth for a 9-4 lead. But Buchholz, just one out away from completing the fifth, allowed a three-run homer to Paul Konerko and Ramon Ramirez was called on to get the final out of the fifth.

“Second time this year,” Buchholz said. “It’s tough to swallow whenever a team gives you the (five-run) lead and you can’t get through five innings with it. Too many pitches. They fouled off a lot of pitches and when I was already deep in the count. They battled up there and got some timely hits and that’s the way it goes sometimes.

“I’ve got to be able to go out there and put up zeroes in multiple innings in a row to even stand a chance to get past the fifth or sixth inning. I failed to do that tonight. I had three good starts leading up to this one and definitely wanted to have another one and it’s definitely hard to go out there and not get a win when your team gives you nine or 10 runs to do it,” Buchholz said. Then there was Francona’s post-game response.

“I thought he was pretty inconsistent. I thought he made some good pitches. I don’t think he made them consistently enough. Two of the pitches accounted for five of the runs. I know there’s a lot more going into it but he ends up in the fifth and he has two outs and a chance to get out of it with no more damage and Konerko hits one and the line looks obviously very different after that swing.”

Perhaps as troubling as the repeat of Aug. 2 was the throwing error over to first base with Scott Posednik essentially at the bag and not even taking a lead yet. Buchholz threw over and airmailed Kevin Youkilis who wasn’t exactly expecting it.

“It’s a reaction that he’s done and probably more frequently as a younger pitcher,” Francona said. “It’s lessening but it’s just a reaction. It’s not that we’re having him throw over to hold the runner. It says that you can tell that he might not be sure of the pitch or the conviction of what he’s going to do and it’s a reaction and something we’ve talked extensively about and will continue to talk about.”

Buchholz, when he’s right, has all four pitches working for him. Fastball, curve, slider and his out-pitch, the changeup. He said he had all four working on Monday night but just no command of them when it mattered - like in the second inning when he left a 1-1 changeup up to Gordon Beckham. The White Sox third baseman drilled it out to left for a two-run homer.

“The second inning, I thought it was an okay pitch but he sat back on it and drove it out of the park,” Buchholz said. ”Prior to the game, all the warmup routine, I probably felt physically better than I have any other start since I’ve been here.

“I was talking to John Farrell I was telling him that I had all four pitches working tonight and really got beat with all four pitches working and that’s one of the few times I can say that,” Buchholz said.

Buchholz said he still feels like he can help the team as a starter and hasn’t lost confidence in his ability to do so.

“Still feel good,” he said. “No loss of confidence in any pitches. Look back at a couple of videos of it and some of the pitches I threw and got hit.

“Overall, I felt like performance wasn’t what you want but the quality of the pitches that I threw for the most part were pretty good I thought,” Buchholz added.