{"id":964,"date":"2009-05-30T11:43:40","date_gmt":"2009-05-30T16:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/?p=964"},"modified":"2009-05-30T11:44:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T16:44:20","slug":"wave-of-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/964\/wave-of-the-future","title":{"rendered":"Wave of the Future!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Local media types, as they are wont to do, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/sports\/baseball\/whitesox\/chi-30-whitesox-chicagomay30,0,1334136.story\">seem<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.suntimes.com\/sports\/baseball\/whitesox\/1599302,CST-SPT-sox30.article\">believe<\/a> that his time served as trade bait has infused young Clayton Richard with a sense of purpose and, more importantly, control of his pitches. This may very well be the case, as many an arm or bat or suit has often only had those moments of stark, harsh realization once the people who sign their paychecks threaten to ship them out of town.<\/p>\n<p>Except this all comes on the heels of dominating the Royals who, despite any kind of upward trajectory we all want to see them attain, are still just the Royals. For perspective, a list of players who went a step further within the past ten years and held the monarchs scoreless for an entire day:<\/p>\n<p><strong>2008:<\/strong><br \/>\nMark Buehrle<br \/>\nJavier Vazquez<br \/>\nJohn Danks<\/p>\n<p><strong>2007:<\/strong><br \/>\nJon Garland<br \/>\nLance Broadway<br \/>\nJose Contreras<\/p>\n<p><strong>2006:<\/strong><br \/>\nJavier Vazquez<br \/>\nJose Contreras<\/p>\n<p><strong>2005:<\/strong><br \/>\nJose Contreras<\/p>\n<p><strong>2004:<\/strong><br \/>\nJose Contreras<\/p>\n<p><strong>2003:<\/strong><br \/>\nNone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2002: <\/strong><br \/>\nJon Garland<\/p>\n<p><strong>2001:<\/strong><br \/>\nNone. The Royals, by the way, lost 97 games that year but were only shut out six times. There&#8217;s probably some kind of moral victory in this, although losing 97 games is still awful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2000:<\/strong><br \/>\nNone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1999:<\/strong><br \/>\nNone.<\/p>\n<p>If the last-night&#8217;s-gem-as-indicator-of-all-things logic is to hold, owning those Royals would only seem to have a handful of possible outcomes: trade to the <a href=\"http:\/\/chicago.whitesox.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20090530&#038;content_id=5040308&#038;vkey=news_cws&#038;fext=.jsp&#038;c_id=cws\">Mets<\/a>, trade to the <a href=\"http:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/articles\/5017-sabermetric-trade-analysis-orlando-cabrera-for-jon-garland\">Angels<\/a>, reassignment to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/sports\/baseball\/whitesox\/chi-30-whitesox-bitsmay30,0,4617836.story\">Charlotte<\/a>, awkwardly-placed wave of the future or immortal franchise hero.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously things aren&#8217;t so simple, which is exactly the point. Richard has had a few good games, which is great for he and us alike, but so what? He&#8217;s also had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/boxes\/TBA\/TBA200904170.shtml\">some<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/boxes\/TEX\/TEX200905020.shtml\">terrible<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/boxes\/CLE\/CLE200905120.shtml\">outings<\/a> not just this year but even <em>this month<\/em>. But this is always the trouble with following baseball: a good stretch or season or career is never visible under a microscope as narrow as a box score or a beat report.<\/p>\n<p>But we knew that, which is why the rest of us will just wait patiently and say pitch on, young Clayton. Pitch on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re out late dominating the Royals, be sure to pack your suitcase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[35,387,454,28,51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}