Clay Buchholz has a no-hitter on his resume, yet a strong case can be made that what he accomplished over his past two starts – both losses – has been even more impressive. In consecutive outings, Buchholz held his own against the aces of two first-place teams. Faced with no margin for error, the young Sox right-hander gave his team an opportunity to win.

Last Saturday, during an otherwise lost weekend in New York for the Sox, Buchholz faced down former Cy Young winner C.C. Sabathia on a day when the left-hander had no-hit stuff. Though the Red Sox could muster nothing against Sabathia, Buchholz was nearly his equal in Boston’s 5-0 loss. The Yankees hit almost nothing hard against Boston’s right-hander, who limited New York to two runs in his six innings, getting 11 groundball outs in the process.

“It was definitely a good step for me,” Buchholz said a few days later, noting his attack of both sides of the plate with a two-seam fastball and changeup to successfully work through a New York lineup that is the most ferocious in baseball.

On Thursday, he faced another of the best pitchers in the American League, Justin Verlander. Verlander was absolutely overpowering, using his 100 mph fastball and nasty hook to keep the Red Sox completely at bay as the Sox fell 2-0.

But again, Buchholz (1-3, 4.45) was very nearly his equal. One day shy of his 25th birthday, Buchholz was dealing, mixing two- and four-seam fastballs with some excellent changeups and a slider that was good enough to get some swings and misses. He didn’t need to use his curveball because of the effectiveness of the rest of his arsenal.

Buchholz logged seven innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on five hits while striking out three. He was, in his own way, dominant – just not dominant enough.

“As good as Verlander was, I thought Clay was, and I’m probably exaggerating, I thought Clay was almost one pitch worse,” said Sox manager Terry Francona. “It’s amazing how the glass can look a lot more full when Clay goes out and does that. He had all four pitches. He commanded the game. We just ran up against one of the better performances you’ll see.”

His velocity was great out of the chute, as he hit 95 mph several times in the first inning before tailing off a bit to 92-93 mph over his last couple innings. Buchholz made one true mistake, a 92 mph two-seamer that didn’t sink, and was thus deposited by Ryan Rayburn onto Lansdowne Street for a solo homer in the seventh.

That shot aside, the poise and stuff exhibited by Buchholz was tremendous. The Tigers took note.

Buchholz had faced Detroit just once before, allowing five runs on 10 hits in just four innings last May. The pitcher who took the mound on Thursday bore no comparisons to the 2008 edition, according to this glowing scouting report from Tigers skipper Jim Leyland.

“He’s really a good looking pitcher. He’s a much better looking pitcher than the last time I saw him in person. I didn’t really realize how good he was until today,” said Leyland. “The time we saw him (in 2008), he threw all breaking stuff, mostly all breaking stuff. Today he used his fastball, he’s got a great change-up, mixed in some breaking balls. He hits 94, 95.

“I didn’t see that the last time we played him. I saw him go to a lot of off-speed stuff all the time. He still uses his change-up very effectively, but he looks like a more polished and complete pitcher now than when I saw him before. He’s very impressive.”

For the most part, Buchholz was in complete control. He left the Red Sox in a position where they were a bloop and a blast away from tying the game. They couldn’t simply because of Verlander’s incredible performance. (As Jacoby Ellsbury pointed out, watching a pitcher hit 100 mph in both the first and eighth innings was “like facing a top closer for eight innings.”)

Even so, the significance of Buchholz’ last two outings is very apparent.

“It’s that building block for me,” Buchholz said of his consecutive great starts. “Going up against two teams in the last two outings that are pretty good hitting ballclubs, maybe one of them (the Yankees) the best hitting ballclub in the league right now, it’s a confidence booster on top of everything else I’ve been working on. Right now I’m moving in the right direction. I’ve just got to keep working and go out every fifth day and give this team a chance to win.”

Buchholz will continue to do that thanks to the current state of the rotation. Tim Wakefield will fly to the Atlanta area to pitch a rehab game this weekend. Daisuke Matsuzaka is still building arm strength in bullpen sessions. John Smoltz is out of the rotation.

So, for Buchholz, there is an opportunity. He is showing now that he deserves it, rather than simply being an option by default. 

“Last year, when things were going downhill, I was just waiting to get sent down. Now, I feel like I’m here and I can definitely help this team,” he said. “It’s just a confidence thing. I had the same stuff last year that I do right now, but it felt like an eternity before each start just because I thought that they were going to send me to Triple A.”

Buchholz has demonstrated few noteworthy things in his last two outings:

• When on, he is capable of the pitch efficiency needed to pitch deep enough to avoid torching his bullpen. For the first time since April 2008, Buchholz delivered consecutive outings of six or more innings. On Thursday, he needed just 100 pitches (60 strikes) to make it through seven innings, his longest outing since an eight-inning, complete-game loss on April 26, 2008.
   
• His pitch efficiency and overall approach is helped tremendously by an increased reliance on a two-seam fastball that is getting early contact groundballs. In spring training, Buchholz emphasized throwing that pitch to both sides of the plate, and ignoring his changeup and curveball (his bread-and-butter pitches in his career, and pitches on which he has sometimes been over-reliant).
  
  Buchholz referred to his outing against the Yankees, when he got 11 groundball outs against four flyball outs, as “pretty much an exact copy of the spring training games I threw well in.” On Thursday, he once again had the sharp two-seamer in the low- to mid-90s, again resulting in 11 groundball outs (this time, against seven fly outs).

• He has been making a conscious effort to attack the strike zone early in counts. On Thursday, he threw first-pitch strikes to 15 of 29 batters after having done so against 20 of the 28 Yankees he faced.
  
  “Strike one is a big part for me,” he explained. “If I’m 0-1 rather than 1-0, I feel like I can do a lot more.”

• He is not freaking out with runners on base. Last year, and in some of his starts in July, Buchholz would throw over to first several times to hold a runner. Now, he has scaled back his pickoff throws to focus more on the batter. With runners on base on Thursday, the Tigers went 1-for-6 with two walks against Buchholz. The lone hit was a run-scoring infield chopper.
  
  “When runners get on base now it’s easier for me to concentrate on what I need to do for the hitter instead of thinking what the runner’s going to do,” said Buchholz. “That’s a big step for me to get over picking over five times because I felt uncomfortable.”

• Perhaps most importantly, he showed guts. Buchholz demonstrated that, while pitching against the American League’s elite, he will not back down from the challenge.
  
  The fact that Buchholz has elite stuff is well known. The Sox have always considered him a potential top-of-the-rotation pitcher. But since the start of 2008, it always remained an open question whether his mental approach would permit talent to translate into performance.
  
  In his last two starts, against two of the best pitchers in the game, he has shown that he can rise to the occasion. While it would be premature to say that he’s arrived, Buchholz has given an indication that he is a pitcher who can compete in the most challenging of circumstances – in a pennant race, against an ace, backed by a lineup that is doing nothing for him. Those are the sorts of pitchers who teams need in October.
  
  Buchholz may or may not end up being that presence down the stretch, but in two hard-luck defeats, he has given his strongest indication to date that he can be such a pitcher. For the Sox and the pitcher himself, the development is a significant one.