Greinke Now Statistically Absurd

The Greinke trickle is officially Niagra.

Getty Images

To quote the owner of the Double Deuce in Road House, "He's good. He's real good."

This whole "Hey, Zack Greinke is good now!" trickle has officially gone Niagra.

A couple weeks ago, Buster Olney -- who is more embedded than Donny Brasco and does more work before 7:30 AM than a Starbucks staff -- had this little Greinke story on his daily blog:

In one sequence of pitches on Saturday, Greinke followed a 96 mph fastball with a 69 mph curveball. Tony Randazzo, the home plate umpire, remarked to Olivo in the middle innings, "He's got good stuff."

"I hope he goes to the ninth inning," Olivo replied.

Sure enough, with his pitch count well under control, Greinke struck out Chris Davis to finish the game. Olivo met the pitcher halfway between home plate and the mound. "You're the best," the catcher told him. "You're going to win the Cy Young Award some day."

Maybe that'll happen this year.

It's a baseball story -- an umpire and catcher both bearing witness to the marvel they were seeing and working with -- and one that's becoming plenty common. Buster and others here have written all about it, then last week SI drops a nice cover piece on it by Joe Posnanski, one that also has fun with the red light, green light game of pitch speed Greinke is playing right now.

Today, after Greinke has dominated once more, we see this stat from ESPN Research and Elias: Zack Greinke shut out the White Sox on Monday night, improving his record to 6-0 and lowering his ERA to 0.40. Only two other pitchers won each of their first six starts of a season while posting an ERA of 0.40 or lower: Walter Johnson for the 1913 Senators (0.35 ERA) and Fernando Valenzuela for the 1981 Dodgers (0.33 ERA).

Valenzuela was something of an oddity, with his sky-searching delivery, and Johnson was the most dominating pitcher of not just his era, but nearly any. Greinke might be a little of both if he can come close to making the first part of this season a regular part of any in the next stretch of his career.

Question for Debate: Is Greinke now, and by far, the most untouchable player in baseball? Think about it: He's now in the first year of a new deal that pays him a total of $38 million and secures him in Kansas City through the end of 2012. If Greinke wins the Cy Young this year while making $3.75 million and is owed just about $34 million over the next three, can we just hand Dayton Moore the award for best executive? (That's before considering this team could win the Central with another bat.) Ron Mahay, Coco Crisp, Kyle Farnsworth, Gil Meche and Jose Guillen make more this year just on this team; given that, there may not even be a package of established players or uber-prospects you could hand KC and nab him.

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine