Quick hit: Why we shouldn't write off Clayton Richard

January 5, 1:57 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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A key to Clayton Richard's success in 2009 will be his ability to get ground balls.

Over the past few months, Sox writers (myself included) have lumped Clayton Richard, Jeff Marquez, Lance Broadway, Jack Egbert, and a slew of other young pitchers into one mediocre-to-bad group that is expected to round out the White Sox rotation in 2009. 

Marquez, Broadway, and Egbert all fit that bill. Richard may not.

Yes, Richard had a 6.04 ERA in his rookie season last year. He had some awful games, like an Aug. 3 game at Kansas City (the one where Miguel Olivo charged DJ Carrasco—I was at Kauffman that day and still think it's ridiculous what Olivo did) in which he gave up nine runs (six earned) on 11 hits in just 4.1 innings.

But Richard also put together some very nice outings, like his Sept. 17 start at Yankee Stadium in which he gave up just two runs over 6.2 innings of work.

There was a common denominator across the board for Richard in 2008, though: when he got ground balls, he had success.

This isn't really groundbreaking stuff. Ground ball pitchers, especially at U.S. Cellular Field, generally have more success. But it's easy to spot the trend for Richard—when he gets ground balls, he's far more likely to have success. He wasn't able to get away with giving up fly balls, like John Danks, Mark Buehrle, and to a far greater extent, Gavin Floyd were able to in 2008. Richard's worst starts were marked by having a roughly 1:1 GB/FB ratio, but his best starts were when he induced significantly more ground balls than fly balls.

The July 29 start at Minnesota is the one exception to this trend, as Richard had a 9:4 GB/FB but still allowed five earned runs in 4.2 innings. There were a two factors that contributed to this, though: first, the game was played on the fast surface of the Metrodome, so a lot of those grounders turned into cheap hits. Second, it was Richard's second career start. Nothing more to it than that.

After Richard was recalled in mid-August, you can really see the trend starting to take shape. His start against the Yankees was his best of the year, given the opponent and the pressure that was on him on that day. Richard shut out the Yankees until he allowed an Xavier Nady RBI single in the seventh, and the second earned run of that start was charged to Richard when Mike MacDougal fired a pitch to the backstop, allowing Nady to score.

It's obvious that Richard has the ability to be a solid starter at the MLB level—it all will come down to whether or not he can be consistent in maximizing his ground balls. If he can, he could be a nice piece of the puzzle at the back of the White Sox rotation in 2009.