D-backs pitcher Buchholz leaves game with tightness in left side

Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Clay Buchholz left Sunday’s game after five innings with tightness in his left side.

After the game, he told Fox Sports Arizona he felt it after his first swing at the plate. Leaving the game was “precautionary.”

Buchholz said he has had worse oblique issues before.

“I’ve tried to get through it, and pitch through it and go another inning, but that’s always led me in the wrong direction,” he said. “Five years, four years ago, I’d have gone out for the sixth, and that’s when trouble happens.

Up to that point, Buccholz had been cruising against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He began the game with 3.2 perfect innings using a different attack to keep hitters off balance.

Typically a fly ball pitcher, Buchholz forced seven ground balls to hold the Pirates scoreless through five innings.

“Today was a little different. I messed with some pitches that just didn’t get hit,” he said.

With a three-run cushion after two innings from home runs by David Peralta and John Ryan Murphy, Buchholz found a nice rhythm out of the windup, continuing the success he found against the Mets in his previous start.

Buchholz’s final line against the Pirates included five strikeouts and five fly balls and the aforementioned seven ground balls.

He finished the outing with just 53 pitches in five innings and was replaced in the game by Andrew Chafin.

“I was around the zone the whole time,” Buccholz said. “The last time I pitched against these guys, they were really patient, and that was sort of our goal today, was to throw strike one.”

His next scheduled start is Friday, July 1, against the Giants, if it is not interrupted by the side injury.

Against the Mets, Buchholz induced 11 ground balls to six fly balls and three strikeouts. It was the first game of the season the veteran induced more ground balls than fly balls in a game this year.

He has induced 44 ground balls and 66 fly balls this season with the D-backs.

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