Official 2009 ILB Thread for Zack Greinke (and Teammates of Zack Greinke)

http://www.kansascity.com/385/story/1165251.html

Zack Greinke will have to battle more than the Toronto Blue Jays when he looks to extend his streak of innings without an earned run Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

There now will be the added weight — and alleged jinx — of appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

That’s right, the magazine selected Greinke to appear on this week’s cover. Subscribers should begin receiving the issue by mid-week. Newsstand copies will be available later closer to the weekend.

Greinke is the first Royals player to appear on the cover since pitcher David Cone on April 5, 1993 for the magazine’s preview to the upcoming baseball season. The last Royals player to appear on an in-season cover was outfielder Bo Jackson on June 12, 1989.

Impressed? Greinke isn’t.

“There’s a lot more interesting stuff going on right now,” he said. “They should have something else on the cover. Playoff basketball or something else.

“So it’s a mistake. They’ll probably sell their least amount of magazines in a long time -- except when NASCAR was on the cover.”

They’ll probably sell their least amount of magazines in a long time

Truth bomb?

you left out the important part: "except when NASCAR was on the cover.”

greinke is a pretty weird dude

“There’s a lot more interesting stuff going on right now,” he said.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0_ynVlwAg9U/RnMTh8w-32I/AAAAAAAAB3s/hB2XnYTB84g/s320/eeyore.jpg

rip hstencil

dude is dealing

6-0, 0.40 ERA, 45 IP, 54 K, 8 BB

Not to take away from Zack Greinke’s masterful shutout, but a Guy Fieri imposter was interviewed on-air last night during Fox Sports Net’s broadcast of the Royals game.

Guy Fieri, for those who don’t know, is the Food Network host of "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives." He travels the country visiting these places. He has been to Kansas City before.

A call to PR person Rebecca Brooks confirmed it: It wasn’t Guy!

fun facts from joe p:

1. Zack Greinke has a 1173 ERA+. I would wager than no pitcher in baseball history has had a 1173 ERA+ through six games.

2. There have been two complete game shutouts thrown in the American League this year. Greinke threw both of them. That makes for a fun “Shutouts” chart on Baseball Reference.

3. There have been eight complete games thrown in the American League. Greinke has three of them.

4. Greinke currently leads the league in wins, ERA, ERA+, shutouts, complete games, strikeouts, WHIP and he has not yet allowed a home run.

5. The league is hitting .242/.294/.337 against him with nobody on base.

But the league is hitting .109/.136/.125 against him with runners on base.

And the league is hitting .097/.097/.097 against him with runners in scoring position.

6. Greinke’s strikeout-to-walk ratio with runners in scoring position — 14-to-0.

7. Batters are hitting .171 against Greinke in the seventh inning and after.

8. Greinke has fallen behind 3-0 to a hitter only four times all year. He did not walk any of the four. He struck out two of them.

9. Greinke’s 0.40 ERA is so low, he could give up nine runs in an inning in his next start, get pulled, and his ERA STILL would be lower than 2.00.

10. This from brilliant reader Rob: Dating back to last year, Greinke has won nine consecutive starts, and in those nine starts he has an 0.69 ERA. How good is that? Well, legendary. There have been 50 pitches since 1954 who have won nine or more consecutive starts. Greinke’s is the second-best.*

WTF has gotten into Alberto Collapso?

i realy enjoy the self-deprecating player interview that avoids bull durhamisms.

for those of you in the seattle market, i highly recommend bedard post game interviews.

another complete game..

http://www.joakimsoria48.com/

http://twitter.com/joakimsoria/

i still belive in the royals
...22 minutes ago from web

He could have said "YEAH BITCHES MEXICUTIONER STRUCK OUT THE SIDE LAST NIGHT INCLUDING MICHAEL CUDDCHEWER NOW WHAT"

But no. The man is humble.

jazayerli
Congratulations Miguel Olivo! No one's had as many Ks (67) with as few BBs (3) before! It takes a great man to break Rob Picciolo's record.
2 minutes ago from TweetDeck

This club will now feature Yuniesky Betancourt.

wtf royals.

http://www.kansascity.com/385/story/1317069.html

BOSTON | [b]The Royals pulled off a major trade today when they acquired shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt from the Seattle Mariners for two minor-league pitchers.

Betancourt, 27, has been a disappointment this season for the Mariners with his batting average tumbling to .250 and producing just two homers and 22 RBIs in 63 games. He is a .279 career hitter in 63 games.

In exchange, the Royals surrendered Danny Cortes and Derrick Saito.

Cortes, 22, was the organization’s minor-league pitcher of the year in 2008 but is just 6-6 with a 3.92 ERA this season at Class AA Northwest Arkansas. He joined the Royals in the 2006 trade that sent reliever Mike MacDougal to the White Sox.

Saito, 21, is 2-6 with a 4.15 ERA in 22 relief appearances at Class A Burlington. He was a 16th-round pick in 2008.[/q]

Woops

"major"

this sounds like an awful trade

wait how does betancourt have any value at all at this point??/

what happened to aviles? they have like 4 shortstops now who don't hit any better than him and don't have upside

Law, LOL: "Betancourt does nothing well on a baseball field. He can't hit and has lost bat speed since reaching the majors. He hacks at everything he sees, and even swings at pitches thrown to other hitters."

joe_sheehan
Ah, Trey Hillman. Soria pitches down five before ASB, down eight last night, but not up two in the eighth. Tie game.

When Greinke starts, his team is 10-10.

He just doesn't know how to win.

Tony Pena Jr to work on becoming a pitcher.

stfu

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=281&f=2054&t=4537311

Dayton said it on the pregame.

Royals' Pena Jr. being moved from shortstop to pitcher

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/royals/2009-07-26-pena-royals_N.htm

"Tony is still young enough if the pitching doesn't go the way we think it has the possibility of going or if the arm doesn't react, he can always go back the other way and continue to play winter ball, see if his at-bats gets better, see if he can become more of a productive hitter," Hillman said.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

joe po has been advocating this for a while

you didn't include the part where he's 28 YEARS OLD xp

New Burlington roster add: RHP Tony Pena Jr.

I was last seen five days ago, when I threw 30 pitches in a blowout win against the A's.

I have pitched in two of my team's last 15 games.

Who am I? (WHERE am I?)

3rd G Beckham homered to left.
4th C Quentin homered to left.
7th A Rios homered to left.

Damn, Zach.

SEATTLE -- Things have been smoothed over after a confrontation between Royals players Mike Jacobs and Jose Guillen as the team arrived in Seattle.

Guillen and Jacobs went nose-to-nose outside the club's Seattle hotel after getting off the team bus on Wednesday night. Witnesses said they were arguing and were separated by teammates Miguel Olivo and Brayan Pena. There was a brief scuffle and witnesses said mediators Olivo and Pena were on the receiving end of errant blows.

Things quieted down immediately and the team entered the hotel without further incident.

"Just a misunderstanding. Obviously you don't want to have misunderstandings with a teammate but sometimes you do," Jacobs said. "It's OK. We kissed and made up."

Guillen, on the disabled list but traveling with the club, did not want to discuss the matter.

"Stuff happens," Guillen said. "We deal with that as professionals."

Manager Trey Hillman, who had already entered the hotel, declined to comment as did Olivo. Pena acknowledged getting in the middle of things.

"I was a peacemaker," he said.

Jacobs said he considered the incident with Guillen closed.

"We're all good. He's probably one of the closest guys on this team -- me and him are pretty close to each other," Jacobs said. "I chalk it up to one of those things like a misunderstanding with a brother or something like that. We're obviously spending seven, eight months out of the year with each other now."

All seemed serene in the Royals' clubhouse before Thursday night's game against the Mariners.

"No big deal," Jacobs said.

Free Disco Hayes

http://www.kansascity.com/159/story/1412928.html

They call Chris Hayes “Disco” because he throws in the 70s.

* Z. Greinke Kansas City Royals
* 9 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 5 K, Win
* @ SEA | Final

Posnanski on an "LH" pitcher:

Since World War II ended there have been 16 pitchers who have made 25 starts in a season and put up an ERA higher than 6.50....

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/10/05/the-hochevar-principle/

from BP:

If the internet made crowd noises, the sabermetrics section would have belted out quite a cheer when Zack Greinke, upon winning his 2009 American League Cy Young Award, uttered, "That's how I try to pitch, to keep my FIP as low as possible."

In any case, Gordon came up to the most extreme expectations and he struggled. Man, did he struggle. Gordon has always had this detached nature which suggests he doesn’t feel pressure, and he carried himself quietly through the worst of it. But underneath it all, I think it was just too much for him. His swing even now has a hole in it — it’s something he simply has to overcome and it’s a daily struggle –and in those early days pitchers just ate him up. The poor guy was hitting .173 in early June, and he’d struck out 55 times in 53 games, and he was taking it out to the field, and even though he still carried himself in that placid and even-tempered way that now marks him as one of the better players in baseball, you could tell: He was seriously lost.

And then, at his low point, Zack Greinke came up to him.

“Alex,” he said, and he pointed to the video room. “Follow me. I want to show you something.”

Greinke’s teammates will tell you: The guy’s kind of a baseball savant. He is known for calling just how hard he will throw his curveball the next inning (“I’m going to try for 50 mph”). He sees things nobody else seems to see. Not too long ago, I was talking with Brandon McCarthy, who is one of the smartest guys in baseball himself, and he said that the coolest thing he can imagine doing is sitting next to Greinke during a game and just picking his mind, view the game through Zack’s eyes. Others have said the same. He will probably stay in baseball after he’s done.

So Gordon was pretty excited when Greinke called him into the video room. He figured that Greinke must have found something in his swing, something small, some little flaw that he could fix and it would turn his entire season around. He followed Greinke to to the monitor. Greinke turned it on.

The video was … yep: Zack Greinke hitting a home run. Greinke watched it lovingly and then turned back to Gordon.

“Do more of that,” Zack said.

http://joeposnanski.com/a-zack-greinke-story

he really is baseball's most loveable asshole

literally LOL

Zack Greinke, asked about his expectations for the home run derby: "I expect the home run derby will be boring and I'll leave early."

— Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) July 16, 2018

otm

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1FWATWX4AAnJvD.jpg:small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1YkkSnXcAIgqbb.jpg:small

he's the Happy Gilmore of baseball

I think he is a shoe-in at this point and it's just a matter of padding stats.

Zack Greinke says he doesn't care about throwing a no-hitter. He'd rather not deal with the attention he'd get. "It'd be more of a hassle than anything."

— Zach Buchanan (@ZHBuchanan) June 14, 2019

Pitching, Mental Game, Competitiveness: Zack Greinke vs. Chipotle pic.twitter.com/YrUJIhZSvH

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 25, 2019

Zack Greinke on the new extra-inning rule: "Not confident in my thoughts on it. I would lean towards I like. But that could change any moment."

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) August 8, 2020

Zack Greinke, calling his own pitch...and throwing a 54mph Curveball. 😂 pic.twitter.com/gp0g2vNFWj

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 23, 2020

Sunday In The Park With Greinke pic.twitter.com/EwP8rBs4kM

— Fayetteville Woodpeckers (@WoodpeckersNC) August 24, 2020

Zack Greinke congrats Elvis Andrus on a nice take, then sits him down.

What a guy.😂 pic.twitter.com/IKV3ID8Q9v

— Cut4 (@Cut4) September 3, 2020

Zack Greinke: “For me, it’s nice not having fans in the stands. Because there’s no one trying to talk to you and ask for autographs and wanting to take pictures and all that stuff. I don’t like any of that stuff.”

— Pedro Gomez (@pedrogomezESPN) October 13, 2020

yet I wonder if he likes this:

Zack Greinke calls his shot... and Ramon Laureano hits a three run shot off him

3-0 A's pic.twitter.com/EGIBiDWsox

— Pitcher List (@PitcherList) October 8, 2020

To whom it may concern

Greinke isn’t telling the hitter what’s coming.

The End

— Brett Anderson (@_BAnderson30_) October 8, 2020

"Sometimes I call the same pitch that I throw" = his "2" is a slider = he threw an 85mph slider = he gave up a donger to Laureano Mr. @_BAnderson30_

gonna side with the multiple big league pitchers on this one

August 12:

Zack Greinke, Calling his own pitch/Filthy Slider. pic.twitter.com/CzCyQ48H6T

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 13, 2020

With a guy on 2nd he’s indicating to his catcher which pitch in the sequence he wants. 2 can mean anything from 1st pitch, last, 2nd etc based on what they decide between innings

— Phil Hughes (@PJHughes45) October 8, 2020

he's done the thing where he's literally yelled the pitch before he threw it but that's not what this was

"Sometimes I call the same pitch that I throw"

-Zach Greinke, throwing his 2 pitch when he calls a 2

"Most of the time it’s not the same pitch"
-Zack Greinke, the next sentence

lol guys

Zack Greinke said the only career milestones he pays attention to are 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases.

"Then I got traded to the American League and that made it harder."

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 1, 2021

(he has nine of each)

Greinke sat in on Odorizzi's arbitration hearing, which was against the Rays, who had James Click at the table. Odorizzi models himself after Greinke and was traded for him.

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) March 9, 2021

The Astros had a “dress like Zack Greinke” day for their flight to Anaheim, according to Yuli Gurriel’s Instagram story. pic.twitter.com/eB7IrmIu7q

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) September 19, 2021

never knew my wardrobe was greinke-core

same, except for the whole foods bag (which i'm told is key)

went to see greinke pitch opening day today, there were good vibes all around, royals fans were happy to see him back. it was cold and super windy and intermittently sprinkling with occasional snow flakes, but greinke was basically the only guy not wearing long sleeves under his uniform.

greinke has seven strikeouts in 28 innings

(and also a 2.57 ERA!)

lol his bWAR is 1.1 and his fWAR is 0.3

I guess fwar assumes that if you’re not striking guys out, you must not be all that good?! (Tho his babip is pretty low and his lob% is a little high I don’t think that alone can explain a 0.3 WAR for a 2.57 ERA)

Posnanski's column today is about Greinke and his strikeout rate:

https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/zack-and-strikeouts-and-ten-who-missed?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

xp fWAR is primarily built on FIP which only factors in Ks, BBs and HRs

is it actually that simple? i thought FIP took a whole bunch of defensive/park stuff into account too?!

fWAR itself does, along with things like catcher framing and infield pop-ups, but FIP is just those three things and that's the heart of it

huh. just when you think you know a stat

Gausman is the anti-Greinke this year: he's given up a hit per inning, but with zero walks or HR, he easily leads pitchers in fWAR while not in the Top 10 in bWAR.

Splitting the difference still seems like the best idea to me.

i respect greinke for what he's managed to do thus far, but regression is going to bury him

in any case i would MUCH rather have gausman -- no walks is cool, no homers is amazing

lmao

Another chapter in the book of Greinke

(via @revive85KC) pic.twitter.com/kpty5SaYzG

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) June 27, 2022

If I was that guy I would both be 100% grateful for the experience and 100% pissed off at Zach Greinke. Maybe 101% grateful actually

not certain i trust that dude's word for it, but if true that's a totally unfunny dick move

Ross Stripling was recently chatting w/ Zack Greinke.

"Man, I really think the Blue Jays are using you right," Greinke said.

Stripling asked what he meant.

"They don't let you go through a third time," Greinke said. "That's perfect for you."

"Thank you?" Stripling said. https://t.co/faVzziOlyP

— Andy McCullough (@ByMcCullough) August 24, 2022

amazing

https://www.mlb.com/news/zack-greinke-strikes-out-1000th-different-batter

Only ("only") 20th on the career K list--moving around a bit helps.

Scherzer must be really close; Verlander, in the A.L. his whole career, probably not.

Saw a post in one of these FB baseball groups that argued Greinke was hurting his HOF chances by hanging on too long and having a miserable season with a miserable team (possibly in search of 3,000 K). I assumed Greinke was already in, and therefore he couldn't hurt his chances--Carlton was terrible near the end, and of course it didn't matter--but for the sake of argument, assume Greinke's not a sure thing. Can a player hurt his HOF chances at the very end? It doesn't really make any difference to the career he's already had. I don't mean someone who peters out during the second half of his career, a big chunk like Fred Lynn or Dave Parker, but rather a 75-80% guy for the last year or two.

nah i don't think so, i think there are clearly guys who didn't play like HOFers over a big chunk of their career (Griffey, Pujols, Ichiro, Frank Thomas to a lesser extent though he was probably at a lower tier HOF level when healthy) but Greinke was good enough recently to not be dinging his stats too much. I do think he's clearly on a lower level at least for consistency vs Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander as far as pitchers go. I mean he's only had eight seasons outta twenty where he was above 4.0 bWAR. i could see him getting dinged more on that vs how he ended things this far down the line. he probably really will get in on the strength of those two huge peak years. If they were merely as good as his other "best" seasons, he'd be closer to an Ian Kinsler kinda guy.

I agree with Omar-- the case against Greinke is his lack of great, CY-caliber seasons, and this year doesn’t change that.

I think he's a cinch too. Dollarama has been periodically putting these out the past few years for four or five dollars: I've bought three (and Scherzer, deGrom, Nelson Cruz, and Bumgarner).

https://cdn.shoplightspeed.com/shops/602407/files/390160/600x800x1/imports-dragon-mlb-figurine-zack-greinke.jpg

He's 1-15 now. Assuming he really is done after this year, is the worst ever season by a probable HOFer?

Adam Wainwright is having a worse season but he's not a HOFer. Then again, if you take away Greinke's two best seasons, or even just knock them down a bit, then you get Wainwright's career more or less.

he's been bad but 1-15 is beside the point

i mean he's only marginally better than replacement-level and can't strike anyone out but he's no 2014 jeter

Carlton over his last two years was awful:

6-14, 5.74
0-1, 16.76

That last season, with the Twins, was only 9.2 IP, but still: 20 hits, 5 walks, 18 earned runs.

Together: 6-15, 6.40, 5.77 FIP, 1.707 WHIP. Putting W-L record aside, and just looking at one season--Carlton's 1987--I'd say Carlton was even worse.

I know that it's about more than the W-L record -- all his stats are awful -- but looking at the numbers, yes, Carlton was worse.

When I wrote my comment I was thinking about pitchers but if we also consider position players then wow, I'd forgotten how awful Jeter was.

I think there is more of a reason to keep sending a bad pitcher out there every fifth day because a lot of teams need somebody to eat innings. But with a bad position players, it really takes a perfect storm of awful player, awful contract, dim-witted nostalgia, oversized player ego, etc. to give him 634 (!) PA without feeling the need to turn him into a part-time player. Ichiro, for instance, was terrible his last few years but played part-time and rarely started.

Niekro was really bad in his final year too, 7-13, 6.30 ERA, negative WAR for each of three different teams, but to be fair, he was 150 years old and Greinke is only 40.

For position players, Willie Mays' last season with the Mets--only 239 PA--is a famous shell-of-himself season: .211/.303/.344. He was 3-10 in the postseason, but no XB hits and no walks.