Clay Buchholz started today against the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. Or Center. Whatever.

This is a highly anticipated start for a number of reasons. Buchholz has been touted as a phenom this year in AAA Pawtucket, and Red Sox Nation has been screaming to bring him up since Dice-NonK has sucked all season. And because Erica Ellyson isn’t a Minor League kind of girl.

My good friend, the Red Sox Dirt Dawg, had this to say about Buchholz’s start tonight:

I’ve been watching and Clay was SOLID tonight. 5 2/3 innings, one run. Not bad. He gave up a single to Lind and walked Rios and Tito pulled him for Bard. But a great performance by a kid under a lot of pressure, and The Dirt Dawg is wrong… again.

Who else is curious about what happens with Buchholz now? The starting rotation is set, so my guess is Buchholz goes back to Pawtucket to get ready for October. What has me even more curious is what do we do with Dice if he’s ready to come back and Buchholz is this solid? The over spending has painted them into a corner, but as the Dirt Dawg also says: These things have a way of working themselves out. And on that one, he’s correct.

And in a spectacular show of eating crow, the Red Sox today “designated Julio Lugo for assignment”. I have to give Theo a ton of credit. He came out and said on RedSox.com:

This was one of the free-agent signings that didn’t work out and we ended up paying for past performance, not current performance. That’s the definition of a mistake, and as the decision maker, that’s on me. We’ll just move on and try to make better decisions going forward.

Right.

He’s been terrible. He’s batting .284 with one homer and 8 RBI’s. But worse is his defense: 7 errors in 97 attempts across 37 games. Sound like a guy worth $9M a year?

Nick Green has taken a lot of criticism, from me and others, about not being an everyday shortstop. He’s proven me wrong. The guy has a rocket for an arm and has impressed me with how steady he is. Between him and Lowrie, I think our infield is tight, as long as Lowell’s prosthetic hip doesn’t blow out.

I think we’re in a very strong position right now. With Oritz coming back strong, my biggest complaint is that ‘Tek couldn’t throw out my mom trying to steal second. Which she does fairly often.

As long as we can avoid too many injuries, I am really confident heading into summer.

Whatchoo think?