Zack Greinke: The Art of Adapting
A dive into the comparisons between Greinke’s 2015 and 2019 season and how Greinke is continuing to dominate hitters going into his 17th season.
It was Game 7 of the World Series, the greatest and most stressful game a professional baseball player could ever dream of being apart of. Zack Greinke was given the ball to start and when asked the day before the game if he was nervous, he replied with a smile, “Its a pretty big game… I”m a little excited”. Zack Greinke went into Game 7 with one goal, and that was to make sure he gave his team the best chance to win. Greinke went into the 6th inning with a 2–0 lead having pitched 5 scoreless innings and only giving up one hit to the strong Washington Nationals offense. He got Adam Eaton to ground out and there was one out, then Anthony Rendon came to the plate and hit a home run into the left field seats and now the game was 2–1. Greinke walked the next batter, Juan Soto, who was another threat to hit a home run, and as soon as Greinke threw ball four, Astros Manager AJ Hinch was out of the dugout calling for his bullpen. Greinke had pitched six and a third of two hit baseball in game seven of the World Series and if all stayed the same he would be in line for the win. Will Harris came into the game and placed a perfect cutter on the down and outside part of the plate and somehow veteran second baseman, Howie Kendrick went down and crushed it and just barely put it into the seats in right field. It was 3–2, Greinke’s performance was now all for not, as soon as he left the game his team was now losing. The Astros would go on to lose game seven 6–2, but Greinke had done what he had done all season, which was to continually beat hitters using tactics (and pitches) that he never would have thought of using when his career started 16 years prior, and thats the premise of this story, how Greinke has adapted to pitch in new ways and still put up numbers that he was putting up during his prime in 2015.
Greinke was one of the best pitchers in the league from 2009–2012 and he was rewarded in the 2012 offseason by the Los Angeles Dodgers with a 6 year contract worth $147 million, which at the time was the largest contract ever given to a right handed pitcher (The record would be broken the next offseason when Felix Hernandez signed a 7 year, $175 million dollar contract with the Mariners). The Dodgers were becoming a powerhouse in the NL west, they had Clayton Kershaw who was just entering his prime and they went out and got the best Free agent pitcher on the market in Zack Greinke. The Dodgers were a great fit for Greinke, he became their number two starter but he got off to a rocky start in his 2013 season as in his second start he fractured his left collarbone after a brawl with Padres outfielder Carlos Quentin. He came back strong and finished his first season as a Dodger with a 15–4 record and a 2.63 ERA in 28 starts. He put up another very good 2014 season as he finished with a 17–8 record and a 2.71 ERA in 32 starts, the highest win total in his career (even though wins are a poor stat to evaluate a pitcher, but that topic is for another story).
When I first started researching Zack Greinke, my eyes absolutely lit up when i looked at his statistics for his 2015 season. The interesting thing about Greinke is that its around his 2013 or 2014 season where he hits his “prime” which is unusual because it was already his 9th and 10th season in the league and usually players hit their prime earlier than that, but not Greinke. In 2015, Greinke threw his fastball 2 mph’s slower at 92.8 than he had in his debut season, he began throwing his change-up harder than he had earlier in his career and started throwing a slower curve ball mixed in with an Eephus pitch (A very slow pitch usually thrown between 60–65 mph that is meant to catch the hitter off guard). Its common that a pitcher will start throwing their fastball slower further on their career and for a lot of guys that means that the downhill part of their career is about to start. Greinke does not work on that philosophy. Instead of trying to throw his fastball as fast he did when he was 20, Greinke mixed his pitches more and started throwing more offspeed pitches than he had ever before. Fangraphs has a statistic called Pitch Value which calculates how well a batter performs against certain pitches. Greinke’s changeup had a -1.7 value in his first season, because he was throwing it slow enough that it was easier for hitters to time it compared to his fastball, but in 2015 Greinke’s changeup had a 19.8 value, more than double then his second best season in 2014 with a 7.6 value. With Greinke throwing his fastball slower than in previous years it grew to a 20 value which was only bested by his 2009 season when he won the CY Young award and his fastball had a 25.8 value.
Greinke learned to adapt to the circumstances he was in. Greinke knew that he wasn’t going to be able to throw a 95mph fastball his whole career. Greinke went on to pitch his best season ever. Greinke finished the 2015 season with a 19–3 record, 200 strikeouts, and a major-league-best 1.66 ERA. He also led the league in WHIP and ERA+. He also stranded 86.5 of his base runners which led the league. Greinke pitched in more innings than he had since his 2009 Cy Young season. Greinke’s 2015 season was one of the best displays of pitching the league had seen in a long time and the funny thing about it, he wasn’t even the best pitcher in his division. The 2015 NL Cy Young award went to Jake Arrieta of the Chicago Cubs, who had arguably a worse (I use this word lightly, he was still incredibly dominant) season than Greinke as Greinke finished with a better ERA (1.77 vs Greinke’s 1.66), a slightly better WHIP (.865 to Greinke’s .844), Greinke also walked less batters and gave up 2 less runs. Greinke wasnt done tormenting hitters yet, it was time for the next chapter in his career.
Greinke opted out of his contract with the Dodgers in the 2015 offseason and their division rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks gave Greinke a 6 year contract worth $206.5 million dollars. Greinke pitched very well in his first couple seasons with the Diamondbacks pitching to a 3.20 and 3.21 ERA in 2017 and 2018 respectfully. Greinke’s fastball continued to dip in velocity but that did not matter, Greinke’s ability to mix up his pitches and throw different speeds was continuing to destroy Major league hitters. This past season, 2019, Greinke added another weapon to his arsenal, a sinker. According to Fangraphs, Greinke had yet to throw a sinking fastball until the 2019 season and he began to use it to induce more groundball outs, as his HR/FB (a stat that calculates how many flyballs are hit that turn into homeruns) was the lowest since 2015 at only 10.9%. His 2019 season is a great companion to his 2015 season as his stats are almost as good in both years. Greinke had his lowest ERA (2.93),lowest WHIP (0.982) since 2015, lowest H/9 (7.9), and HR/9 (0.9) all since … 2015. He walked less players than he had ever done in his career and then on July 31st at the trade deadline he was traded to the Houston Astros. The Astros already had a great starting rotation. They had added Justin Verlander at the deadline 2 years prior. Verlander had already won a CY Young award (and was on his way to win his second), and they had Gerrit Cole who was pitching on par with Verlander and would end up finishing right behind him in the AL Cy Young vote. The best pitching rotation in the league added Zack Greinke and they became near unstoppable. Greinke finished the season with the AStros to an 8–1 record, and a 3.02 ERA. The Astros finished the season with the best record in the MLB at 107–55.
Then the Astros beat the Rays in 5 games in the division series despite a very bad start by Greinke in game 3 where he allowed 6 runs in only 3.2 innings of work. Greinke took the loss in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Yankees, but then pitched well in game 4. Then the Astros took care of the Yankees and they were onto the World Series against the Nationals.
Now it leads us back to the beginning of this story. Zack Greinke’s ability to adapt to the game of baseball and to be able to rethink how to pitch made it possible that he would be able to take the mound in Game 7 of the World Series. Many great players never get the chance to play in the World Series and I’m glad that even though the result was not what he would have wanted, Greinke in his 16th season took the mound in a world series game. It is a moment he will likely cherish for the rest of his life, and Greinke’s career will be one I will never forget.
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