Zack Greinke Can’t Catch a Break
The Milwaukee Brewers’ acquisition of Zack Greinke was arguably the biggest move of the offseason. With Greinke and Yovani Gallardo at the top of the Brewers’ rotation — and Shaun Marcum slotting in at number three — the Brewers looked like legitimate World Series contenders. Unfortunately, Greinke’s time as a Brewer has been tarnished by extremely poor luck. First, a rib injury — which he suffered playing basketball — sidelined Greinke’s Brewers’ debut until May. Since then, his performance on the field hasn’t matched up to the hype. Through eleven starts this season, Greinke carries a 5.63 ERA. A look at Greinke’s peripherals, however, reveals a pitcher experiencing one of the best seasons of his career.
After Greinke’s debut as a Brewer, Eric Seidman explained that “Brewers fans shouldn’t be overly concerned about Zack Greinke‘s shaky debut on Wednesday.” Well, ten starts have passed and that message still applies. No player has been affected by bad luck more than Zack Greinke this season. Despite posting some of the strongest peripherals of his career, Greinke’s ERA is unsightly.
A move to the NL has benefitted Greinke greatly. He’s currently posting a ridiculous 11.55 strikeout rate with just a 1.73 walk rate. Among all pitchers who have thrown at at least 60 innings this season, Greinke’s current strikeout rate leads all of baseball. The heightened K-rate doesn’t appear to be a fluke either, as Greinke’s SwStr% has jumped to astronomical levels this season. Pitchers with stats this good should be well on their way to an All-Star appearance, yet bad luck continues to plague Greinke. Among all pitchers who have thrown at least 60 innings, the gap between Greinke’s ERA (5.63) and FIP (2.72) is the largest in the league. So, what’s preventing Greinke from showing his true dominance?
As usual, a poor BABIP is part of the culprit. Greinke’s current BABIP is much higher than his career rate and should eventually regress as the season progresses. Though there may be some reason for concern since Greinke is giving up more line drives this season, which would lead to a higher BABIP. He’s also experienced some struggles with the home run, as his HR/FB — which has been in the single digits for four straight season — has jumped to 13.8% this season. Finally, Greinke’s LOB% has dropped to a completely unsustainable level. Only 55.2% of the batters Greinke puts on base are being stranded. The league average for LOB% is typically 70% (Greinke’s career average is 71.7%), so we have to expect Greinke to improve there as well.
Step off the ledge, Brewers fans; everything is going to be alright. Though it doesn’t show on the surface, Zack Greinke is experiencing one of the best seasons of his career. All of Greinke’s peripherals show a pitcher throwing at an All-Star level. If not for a ton of bad luck, it’s not unreasonable to look at Greinke’s numbers and see a potential Cy Young candidate. That’s not the case, however. Greinke’s luck may have held him back thus far, but his underlying performance still indicates that he’s one the best pitchers in all of baseball. Don’t change your perception of Greinke after only eleven starts, he’s still the ace Brewers’ fans expected.
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Any idea what’s the cause for that LD%, though? It’s amazing that he’s able to give up liners at such a rate, yet maintain a tRA even 5% above the NL average.
There’s gotta be something, though, right? I know BABIP is supposed to be 100% luck-driven, but it’s awfully tough to listen to the radio every fifth day and hear Greinke get shelled and not think that he’s just pitching like crap.
Every time, he’ll strike out a bunch of hitters, then give up four runs in an inning. Looking at box scores, a 5IP, 5H, 1BB, 7K outing almost invariably means that he gave up four hits and the walk in one inning, leading to four earned runs. It’s extremely frustrating because despite all the Ks, he’s not helping the team at all.
There was a fair amount of discussion on here regarding the notion that BABIP is entirely luck driven that you may want to consult.
From a distance, just tracking his starts without watching any of them, it has seemed like he’s been pitching well enough to win most games, with the exception of the last outing.
Good comments. This is where sabermetrics fail me. Yes, Greinke has amazing periferals, and no doubt he’s been unlucky at times, but he’s getting hit hard far too frequently to shrug it off as luck.
I think it’s time to consider that BABIP might not be telling the whole story, just like AVG and ERA before it. There’s something missing that we’ve yet to pick up on to explain this type of problem.
There’s actually been a fair amount of discussion on here recently suggesting that BABIP doesn’t explain everything, even when you consider xBABIP based on batted ball rates. I believe Dave wrote a post on it a week or so back that you could look at.
Anyway, I think it’s important to note that sabermetrics, at least at this point, doesn’t tell the whole story, and nobody who understands them ever said it did. Sabermetrics do, however, tell more of the story than traditional statistics, and we can say quite confidently that, while we’re not explaining everything, we’re explaining a whole lot more than we were even a couple years ago with stats.
You’re absolutely right, BABIP doesn’t tell the whole story, much like no one stat ever “tells the whole story.”
A 55% strand rate is ridiculously low. It could be he’s not pitching well out of the stretch, for whatever reason, which would be a new problem for him, since he’s done fine in the past.
But he’ll likely improve drastically on that stat, since it is 16 pp below his career average, as well as his overall BABIP stat.
Bases empty: 7.8 k/bb, .363 BABIP, .261/.300/.444 line against
Men on: 5.5 k/bb, .347 BABIP, .266/.304/.514 line against
RISP: 3.2 k/bb, .425 BABIP, .333/.391/.667 line against
Greinke, 2 years ago, actually tried to address his ‘BABIP’ issue by using the statistic to put more sink on his pitches and create more ground balls. His reasoning was, he could lower his pitch count and get further into games, just as Halladay has indicated he does. I’m not sure it didn’t bakfire a bit. The few times I’ve seen him throw, it seems to me he is lower in the zone, but his slider doesn’t have the sharp break it had in 2009. He’s getting more ground balls, as he wanted, but they seem to be a lot harder hit and harder to set an infield defense against. I guess the moral of that story is, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
I thought there was lots of talk about how teams with bad defense had consistently higher babips, or do I just want to remember that? I seem to remember that coming up when discussing the Brewers in the past as well.
I think I mentioned this in the last Greinke article, but forgot to check if there was a response.
That would go some way to explaining him under-performing his peripherals. Wouldn’t it? It would also give some cause for concern, in that he might not do as well as he should
BABIP is not all luck. It is also very heavily influenced by team defense.
The awesome part is, Greinke most likely is aware of his bad luck since he said a few years ago he just tries to keep his FIP as low as possible. Hopefully he stays positive until his luck turns around.
Luck, nonsense, chance, maybe, but luck, phooy.
Good luck, bad luck, whatever. It’s his piss-poor attitude that is causing his problems.
I don’t see how attitude factors into BABIP. Also, by “piss-poor attitude,” do you mean to say his “social anxiety disorder?”
“Piss-poor attitude”
Not sure where that is coming from. Any reports out of Milwaukee shows that Zack is happy there and his teammates are pleasantly surprised at how good he is in the clubhouse because they stated that they had heard some murmurings about his “attitude” while with KC and that his Social Anxiety Disorder made him a loner. That comment is an uninformed cheap shot.
it’s time for fan graphs abbreviations. you just type in the number and everyone knows what it means how about
FG1 – Small Sample Size
FG2 – I dont understand statistics but…
FG3 – I know this topic has been answered before but…
FG4 – I dont know what i’m talking about but i’ll pretend like i do.
FG5 – I have to respond to every article.
FG6 – And here’s something useful to add.
So in summary this article becomes “Zach Greinke – FG1 – really cool result”
(and my comment can be FG5)
FG4
Do #6org jokes count as FG5?
As a Twin’s fan, yes they do. Stop it, you’re making me cry.
We need to dig deeper into this.
Recall Dave Cameron’s few pieces on Josh Beckett a few weeks ago. Dave’s main point was that Beckett was pitching exactly the same way he was in 2010, except this time around he was getting results that matched his FIP and XFIP. That’s all there is to it right?
Well someone showed Dave that in 2010, Beckett’s pitches weren’t moving as much as they had in the past (or in 2011 for that matter), and despite the impressive peripherals in 2010 Beckett actually wasn’t pitching well too.
Maybe someone can take a look at the Pitch/FX data on Greinke and see if his movement and command are suffering, which might explain the high LD%.
if I were the Brewers, i’d try to lock him up to an extension right now!!! his value is lower than ever, right?
whatever, I’m a huge Brewer fan, and I still consider Zack the best. find me a pitcher who strikes out 11.5/9 and sucks? or even like, 9/9?
I think part of the K-rate is similar to James Shields last year, where his K/9 is up because he’s facing more batters due to BABIP and what have you.
So what you are saying is that because his BABIP is higher causing him to pitch to more batters and the defense behind him aren’t helping, the only outs he is getting is Ks? Any time a batter makes contact, no out will be made in the field? That is the only way I can understand this comment. To me, in theory, it shouldn’t matter what the pitcher’s BABIP is to calculate K/9 because the denominator is innings based, not # of batters faced.
Not true – innings are based on three outs, but the K part of K/9 is based on batters. Every grounder that sneaks through is another shot at a K on the next hitter, as you said. This is why an argument breaks out every other week here about K% (per PA) being better than K/9.
He’s striking out nearly 30% of batters faced. For comparison’s sake, he struck out around 26.5% of batters faced in 2009.
While his K/9 rate is slightly elevated due to more runners reaching base, he’s also simply striking a higher percentage of batters out.
Also of note, his WHIP – 1.25 – is equal to last season’s number, and is both lower than his career average and the MLB average.
I don’t know if this is the right comparison, but over the long term, we should assume that Greinke will regress to the mean as far as BABIP goes, right? But why would we assume the same for a guy like… Chone Figgins, who basically has the hitters’ version of Greinke’s bad luck with BABIP.
BABIP is much less controllable for pitchers than it is for hitters. When a hitter’s BABIP is low, there might be some bad luck but there also might be a change in skill set. The bottom line is that hitters have much more control where a ball goes when it’s hit than pitchers do.
The problem with Figgens is his LD% rate is well below his career norms. I wonder what his xBABIP is?
Anyone know where I can find xBABIP? Fangrpahs doesn’t have it :(
I’d never wish a Brewer’s fan to step off the ledge. Maybe a Yankee fan…
Not even Bud Selig?
Not a fan of piling on Bud.
Regardless of any doubts about BABIP or whatever, a guy with a 6.67 K:BB does not deserve a 5+ ERA. I don’t care if he’s throwing meatballs to every hitter he doesn’t walk or strikeout, that’s still bad luck.
Two comments.
1. Greinke’s BABIP won’t regress because Greinke has purposfully changed his pitching style to effect BABIP. It’s a system with feedback now, and not independent. The response on an aggregated statistic to his strategy is not predictable.
2. Do most of the commenters here ever watch Greinke pitch, or do they just assume what his pitches do when in flight is irrelevant.
Greinke’s batted ball profile is different from previous years in a number of respects- much higher line drive rate, much lower pop-up rate, and much higher HR/fly rate. This suggests that when he is hit, batters are hitting the ball on the screws more often (which is unusual for a pitcher with that kind of K rate); the first two elements naturally lead to a higher BABIP.
As for the ERA, a higher BABIP and HR/fly will lead to lower LOB% in and of themselves. It also appears that his relievers have not been doing him any favours with bequeathed runners. When BP makes the adjustment for this, he goes from “runs allowed” of 6.06 to “fair runs allowed” of 3.56. I guess that is pretty important…
HR/FB rate is clearly related to a major change in ball park effects. It is hard to hit Homers in KC and easy in Milwaukee.
I thought HRs don’t factor into BABIP?
nevermind I misread your comment… ignore me.
The line-drive rate is troubling, that will directly lead to a high BABIP. Zach has all-world stuff, but he does not have the mental makeup of other top pitchers like Cliff Lee or Halladay.. I think most of his current problems relate to pitch sequence and game calling, that does affect results at the margins.
Some part of the inflated BABIP has to be the horrible Brewers defense. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it is hurting him. The Brewers trading for Greinke plus Yuni Betancourt was like one of those “if you could have a million dollars but you had to live the rest of your life like X would you do it” scenarios.
There might be some truth to this – the Brewers have the second highest ERA-FIP in baseball, ahead of only the Cubs. Both the Cubs and Brewers have been noted umpteen times to have terrible defense this year. Now, the causation could go the way you’re thinking (bad defense -> high ERA-FIP), or it could simply mean that the wags are observing “bad luck” and inferring “bad defense”.
Either way, Greinke has the worst ERA-FIP on the staff (among pitchers with > 3 innings). So even if this effect is real I would still expect Greinke’s results to be much better going forward.
He still had Yuni before, and he’s gotta count for something
It should be noted that the Brewers in general are pretty terrible on defense. That should lead to a higher BAPIP than it was during the rest of his career with the Royals.
Oops, Ballens snuck that in right before me. Jerk!
It made your name really awesome though.
Greinke’s last start was super unlucky. After hitting the first batter he drew a pop up to straight away center field and Nyjer Morgan fell down which allowed the run to score and Granderson ended up with a triple. The next play Teixera hit an infield single and Granderson scored. Neither of those runs were really Greinke’s fault, Nyjer made the error, but they still counted against him. Factor in a ground ball that beat the shift during that inning and an error by Casey Mcgehee and it ended up as a ~35 pitch inning.
FIP is garbage, Greinke is just not as good as all these nerds think.
the Brewers do have a terrible defense, but that’s because of the infield. The outfield is average to above average even with Braun in left. Zack being a flyball pitcher, he should be hurt less by the Brewers poor d but instead he has the worst FIP to ERA difference on the team, odd …
I’ve watched Greinke in a few starts where he got shelled. Ball after ball was squared up. This wasn’t a case of a ball going through a hole, bloopers off the end of a bat, or McGehee muffing a play a more competent third baseman would make. I do not know how you could watch those starts and think “Oh, bad luck there!”…hitters consistently squaring balls up and getting good wood on the ball time after time isn’t just all “bad luck”.
The result of a slider with no tilt and breaks early, not his frigging BABIP.
just an idea, but i noticed that his struggles arent exactly out of the stretch, but it’s really when there is a runner in scoring position. Looking at his FIP, and HR/FB rate, both are extremely high with a runner in scoring position, and his K/BB is down as well. Whereas his rates are similar when comparing Bases empty and Men on Base. I almost wonder if he is tipping his pitches to the guy on second base, making it easy to relay signs to the batter. It could be possible that he is holding his glove a certain way to allow for runner on second to see the grip.
Maybe i am just over-analyzing and its just really bad luck, but his numbers are drastically different. Is there any way to get data on his rates with a runner on second vs all other situations?
He doesn’t tip his pitch, exactly, he just falls back on his best pitch and historically reliable pitch sequence, slider/fastball/fastball in/slider out. He must not realize how much film exists of him in a strike out situation. Couple that with a slider people pick up more easily and it’s bat on ball, hard. His swing through strikes are also way down.
“Greinke’s SwStr% has jumped to astronomical levels this season”
The two games I’ve watched him in, admittedly he was shelled, he got a few called, but I don’t remember a single swing through. If what you say is true, whatever is causing that inconsistency, should it actually be there, could be causative.
Greinke With Runners on Base
Runner on 2nd (any situation)
.333/.381/.725 – .371 BABIP
3 K/BB (12 K, 4 BB)
Runners on Base (not on 2nd)
.207/.233/.328 – .324 BABIP
10.5 K/BB (21 K, 2 BB)
you sure he’s not tipping?
FG1
(Small Sample Size)
Every argument being made about Greinke right now could have been made about Lee up until about five starts ago… and Greinke has about five starts fewer than Lee.
People need to stop looking for reasons for unsustainable BABIPs. Whether Greinke gives up harder contact than some other pitchers or not is immaterial, because he’s posting super high BABIPs and super low LOB% to an extent that is definitely [i]not[/i] a repeatable skill for a pitcher (well, no major league pitcher, anyway).
Thank you. We go through this every single year with some pitcher or another.
Even if there’s something up with his BABIP and it remains high (doubtful) his LOB% won’t stay that low. Pitchers that good at striking people out don’t leave men on base at that clip forever.
Is it possible that he’s throwing too many strikes?
This is what I don’t like about FIP. Okay, he’s far enough into the season with a high ERA. Maybe he either Ks guys or they blast one in the gap? The Crew defense is bad, but come on, don’t just blame it all on bad luck.
I’d actually stop using FIP. Using something else. It doesn’t tell enough of the story and just ignores what’s not as easy to track.
I only read half the comments, but here’s something to consider. His wFB value has plummeted since 2009. Could it be that hitters are teeing off on his FB in hitters’ counts (3-0, 3-1, 2-1), yet when he reaches 0-2, 1-2, and maybe 2-2 counts he is putting people away with his out pitches just fine?
The poster above me mentioned a similar idea. I mean, especially for someone who knows how awful walks can be, it’s not unreasonable to assume he is grooving fastballs down the plate on hitters’ counts, no?
Is there a way we can check this?
I don’t think Greinke is as bad as his ERA, just because that’s really bad, but I don’t think he’s as good as his FIP says. FIP seems really short sided to me.
Looking at FIP, if you had 2 pitchers, 1 walks 0, Ks 7, no home runs, but gives up 5 doubles and 4 runs. Another pitches the same amount of innings, walks 3, Ks 5, 1 solo home run for 1 ER. The guy who pitched better was “lucky” even though maybe he just pitches to contact and is effective at it. That’s what I don’t like about FIP. It’s very incomplete.
I was thinking about this the other day. Guys with high K rates get praised. Sure their /9IP numbers look great. However, that takes more pitches. So which would you rather have? A guy who will dominate 6 innings, but the have to leave because he’s thrown so many pitches, or a guy who pitches to contact and can go 7-8? Bullpen guys are usually worse, so wouldn’t you want to sacrifice the eye popping K/9 numbers for a guy who is more economical if it means winning?