With Greinke, Always More Questions Than Answers
No pitcher’s starts leave me with more questions than Zack Greinke‘s. Everybody knows he can be great — see his dominant 2009, the second half of 2011 — but he doesn’t always live up to the hype or the peripherals — 2010, the first half of 2011.
When he’s on, he’s nearly impossible to hit; when he’s off, it’s nearly impossible to tell why. Consider his 2011:
May/June: 62.1 IP, 80 K, 12 BB, 8 HR, 66 H, 5.63 ERA, 2.80 FIP
Rest of season: 109.1 IP, 121 K, 33 BB, 11 HR, 95 H, 2.80 ERA, 3.08 FIP
Tuesday night’s start against the Seattle Mariners stuffed all the bewilderment of Zack Greinke into one start — Greinke set a modern day record, becoming the first starter ever to strike out 13 batters in a five-inning start. But in those five innings, the Mariners still managed two walks and seven hits including a home run. It was one of the game’s most dominating starts and yet nine of 24 Mariners reached base — a .375 OBP! — and four managed extra base hits.
Again, we are left with more questions than answers.
I don’t mean to suggest Greinke wasn’t good Tuesday. For the most part, he was brilliant, and he was particularly brilliant in the most important moments, stranding eight baserunners (nine if you count his pickoff of Kyle Seager). But even in a start like this one, where his changeup and slider worked so well in tandem with a zipping, lively fastball, there were lapses. That ever-bothersome term “consistency” springs to mind, and it will likely bother him all the way to the bank this winter when free agent negotiations heat up.
The idea that true talent remains constant throughout a full season is a shaky one at best — players play through pain, they make adjustments, they change strategies and tweak stances all throughout the season. And they’re human. We would, however, at least expect true talent to remain constant through just one whole game.
But is that a correct assumption? When Greinke pitched in Milwaukee, it seemed at times like every single mistake pitch he made would not just be a mistake but the worst mistake possible — he would be cruising, and then he would lay a 92 MPH fastball right in the middle of the zone. It would feel as if a different pitcher made the pitch.
On Tuesday, Greinke was cruising, and then he did this in the top of the fourth:
Justin Smoak turned that 92 MPH fastball into a home run.
This is, I think, a convenient answer to Greinke’s questions. Watching the start as a whole, it was nigh impossible to imagine him giving up any runs, much less a home run on such an enticing pitch. Watching that (one-pitch) at-bat by itself, things fall into place.
Unfortunately, as convenient as this idea is, there isn’t much of a way to test it. The idea of a “mistake” pitch is largely subjective. To define it objectively, we would need some measure of how far the pitcher misses the catcher’s glove. Even that might not truly capture it — pitches missing outside the strike zone aren’t the kind of mistakes Greinke (at least hypothetically) gets killed on, they’re the ones that miss within the zone. And could a pitch still be a mistake if the spot was hit but just poorly selected? We are treading on the dangerous terrain of subjectivity, rarely good news for statistics.
Still, curiosity reigns. I took notes on the start, specifically watching for pitches that appeared to be “mistakes.” You can read the notes here.
Out of 110 pitches, I noted 24 that could be construed as mistakes — pitches that appeared to be in a part of the zone as to be particularly hittable — although seven were accompanied by question marks or “could be” notes. Of these 24, we have the seven hits (only Miguel Olivo‘s single was particularly questionable), but also have four swinging strikes, nine fouls, and four looking strikes.
In some cases, it was clear Greinke was leaving the ball to close to the center of the plate. In others, it wasn’t clear if this was simply Greinke’s sequencing — certain first-pitch curveballs, for example, were dangerously near the center of the zone — or perhaps knowledge of the hitter — Greinke was willing to throw multiple fastballs down the middle to Brendan Ryan where he didn’t do so to nearly anybody else.
Having the stuff to be able to pitch in the strike zone is one of the qualities of an ace. The zone contact leaderboard for starters is a veritable who’s who of aces — Cole Hamels and Justin Verlander lead; Jered Weaver, R.A. Dickey, CC Sabathia, Clayton Kershaw and Roy Halladay (among others) inhabit the top quintile.
At least there is some data to back up this idea. In many cases, this ability to pitch in the strike zone means having the stuff to get away with mistakes. Greinke can do that — his fastball dials up to 95 with movement and his breaking stuff is savage, particularly his changeup against left-handers (just ask Trayvon Robinson). But when that velocity slips into the low-90s and the pitch misses towards the middle of the plate, disaster strikes. Greinke only has an 89.5% zone contact rate since 2010, right between Trevor Cahill and Jeff Karstens, 83rd of 126 qualifiers.
As I watched Greinke carve up many of the Mariners hitters he faced Tuesday, it was clear that a big part of his success comes from sticking to a specific plan of attack against hitters. Against hitters on either side, Greinke routinely attacked the outside corner, mixing in changeups against the lefties, curveballs against the righties and the changeup against both. He showed how capable he was of executing this attack, too — living on the corners, pitching in a way where if the pitch missed, its natural movement would carry it outside the zone instead of back into a dangerous area. But occasionally it would miss the wrong way, and therein lied the problems.
Zack Greinke is most certainly a good enough pitcher to handle these mistakes. For all this racket above, Greinke still gave up just the one run on Tuesday and he continues to have a good-to-great season depending on if you prefer his ERA (3.42) or his FIP (3.05) as the starting point for your discussion. But with his 2009 Cy Young, his ever-excellent peripherals and his impending free agency, the question of just how good he is and how good he can be is a pertinent one. Is he a true ace, a number one in scouting parlance? Or is he one of the excellent but less select borderline pitchers, those who entice with greatness but don’t sustain it on the level of a Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson or Justin Verlander or Felix Hernandez?
I think there are good reasons to believe Greinke can get to that level again as he was in 2009. At only 28 years old, he should still have many fine years ahead of him. He controls strikeouts, walks and home runs as well as any pitcher in the league.
But for the last three years, glaring mistakes have eaten away at the reputation earned by his Cy Young season. Tuesday’s start against Seattle showed both sides. It displayed both Excellent Zack and Struggling Zack in one tidy package, and as long as Struggling Zack remain in full visibility, these doubts on his ability to return to the top flight will remain.
If we could objectively define what a ‘mistake pitch’ is, I think mistake pitches/runs created off mistake pitches might be a worthwile regressing stat.
Im sure as you say Greinke would be at the top, and from my own anecdotal evidence 2011 Brandon Morrow?
It comes down to grit. Some pitchers have it, and Grienke does not. Clemens, Pedro, Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan – they had grit. Mark Buehrle gets by with grit, as does Andy Pettite. If Clemens comes back at age 51, he will be fine because of it. But when the game is on the line, Zack Grienke just doesn’t have the grit to force his will on the batter and get the extra out.
Go ahead and tell me why I am wrong with your big numbers. But Clemens and his billion strikeouts tells me I am right.
This has to be troll bait.
Its one of the 45 everdiso clones, so yes.
Call it what you will. But Mark Buehrle and Andy Pettite pitch well enough to win despite not having Greinke’s stuff. Grienke has the stuff, but he lacks the determination to come through in the clutch.
When you are tied in a crucial game, do you want Greinke or Buehrle? Buehrle will get the key out, but Greinke will find a way to choke.
GRIT! It’s what’s for breakfast!
This comment is for the birds. Literally. Birds need grit to keep their beaks in shape. Does Buehrle like birds?
http://www.breederschoiceseeds.com.au/products/Calcium-Grit..html
I mean, Buehrle acted like he wanted to pitch for the Cardinals – AN ACTUAL BIRD MASCOT TEAM. But then he pitched for the Marlins. A fish. Lame.
What a sellout. His grit would have been well received on a bird mascot team. I don’t need your FANCY big number strikeout totals to tell me that. Tell me I am wrong DISCO man. TELL ME!
“It was one of the game’s most dominating starts and yet nine of 24 Angels reached base — a .375 OBP! — and four managed extra base hits.”
9 of 24 Mariners?
Oh come on, what are the odds of 9 of 24 Mariners reaching base?
yeah, that doesn’t sound factually correct
And Justin Smoak homered? Sounds like an article from The Onion.
“Greinke only has an 89.5% zone contact rate since 2010.” Only implies that’s low which would be good, but having 90% of your pitches in the zone result in contact and being compared to Cahill and Karstens is bad.
“mixing in changeups against the lefties, curveballs against the righties and the changeup against both.” One of those changeups shouldn’t be a change up.
Otherwise, really interesting points. But whether or not Greinke really has ace talent, he will be paid like he has ace talent.
Greg Maddux had great stuff and was very, very smart. I’m not saying Greinke is dumb, but maybe he just hasn’t figured out how to use that great stuff he has? Tim Lincecum has lost velocity, but he still can strike out a lot of batters which indicates he still has good stuff. He struggles wouls also seem to be mental.
I think it’s much more likely a question of focus than intelligence.
It is question of guts, and Mr. Greinke does not have any.
What have you observed that is sufficient for you to draw that conclusion?
For starters, he submitted the worst-ever performance on the Aggro Crag in 1994. Didn’t even make it past the first area of falling foam-rubber boulders.
You cannot quantify “grit”. That bothers a lot of people who only know baseball as numbers on a computer screen. The players and real fans know grit when they see it. When you watch 36 year old Jack Morris churn out 10 shoutout innings in game 7 of the World’s Series, you can recognize grit. When you chart numbers on a spreadsheet, you only see boring numbers. Have it either way… but I’ll still take the excitement of the actual game.
When you analyze numbers and also watch games, you learn things that inform your experience and make games more interesting.
Here is a fantastic article on calculating grit. It’s from 2007 so it does not factor in new developments in grit such as height/skin tone.
http://www.flotsam-media.com/2007/12/flotsam-data-special-tangiblizing.html
Do straw men have grit? I thought they were made out of straw….
You can’t quantify grit but sometimes we can make educated guestimates that qualify it to a certain degree.
Wait -did the Mariners put 8 balls in play and get 7 hits? Wow.
Listening to the game, it sounded like Zack benefited from a very generous strike zone as well as a bad call on the pickoff. How many of those strikeouts were real? The notes seem to indicate at least 3 were questionable. It seems relevant to an analysis of the quality of the start. I wonder how many of the strikeouts in the other dominant games were due to questionable officiating.
this isn’t the nfl, we have real umpires here
Haha of course the old big white dudes were the gritty ones right? ZG is just some whippersnapper who came out with his mental illness troubles so let’s just call him a “head case” eh? He’ll never be the “gritty” guy to these people, unless 1
10 years from now he pitches a complete game in late October.
Then people will call him lucky, not gritty because it wasn’t 10 innings in game 7.
It’s true. You can’t be gritty on a team with a well-stocked bullpen and spare starters for relief.
In regards to my above comment – your best chance for grit is having a terrible manager.
Grit is something you can’t measure. People ask me would you rather have Miguel Cairo or Joey Votto. I respond by asking who has more heart. Cairo every time.
Greinke has a career LD rate of over 20%. His ERA (either career or of the last 3 years) is a reasonable reflection of what ought to be expected of him. The key point is that he has averaged 200 innings pitched over the last 5 years. That record of good health is probably more important for the free-agent discussion than whether he has a 15 or a 25 per cent chance of emerging as one of the dominant pitchers in the league on a consistent basis.
Dodgers.
Six years.
$150M.
Brewers
5 years
$100M