What history tells us about Zack Greinke's future (Hint: it's good)
Zack Greinke goes for the Royals today, and if there's anything that can take fans' minds off the Kyle Farnsworth debacle from yesterday, it's Zack.
All due respect to Meche, but Greinke is the Royals' best starter, or at least the one with the brightest future, and the guy who will be starting opening days when and if the Royals put themselves into contention the next few years.
He signed the $38 million deal in the offseason, and it's no coincidence that he's coming off a terrific season in which he looked to be (finally) fulfilling the potential that so many see in him.
In his age 24 season, Greinke won 13 games, went over 200 innings, struck out 183, with a 3.47 ERA and 123 ERA+. A really nice season, no matter how you look at it, and one that has at least a few "experts" predicting he'll win the Cy Young -- this year.
I puched those numbers -- the age, wins, innings, strikeouts and ERA+ -- into the new-and-improved Baseball Reference's magical Play Index machine, cut it down to seasons since 1978, and came up with a promising list.
There have been 22 such seasons since 1978 -- a date I picked randomly, but just wanted to get names most of us have seen pitch -- and I think you'd take your chances having any of these guys.
Dwight Gooden did it three times (and did it by 21), Roger Clemens and Carlos Zambrano each did it twice, so there are 18 pitchers on this list -- and really, Mark Prior is the only scary name.
They're not all Hall of Famers, but most of these guys were/are absolute rotation studs for more than just a season or two. Barry Zito is on an all-time terrible contract with the Giants now, but won a Cy Young and 102 games for the A's.
Ramon Martinez hasn't had the career some expected, but he won 15 or more games four times and you have to wonder how much he was held back with his "Greinke season" including 12 complete games at the age of 20, throwing 234 innings and violating the Verducci Effect.*
Most of the other names are a who's-who of the best pitchers in recent years, like Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels. It's a good list when Javier Vazquez (another Verducci violator) is one of the shakiest names.
Six of the guys on this list -- Greinke, Hamels, Justin Verlander, Tim Lincecum*, Scott Kazmir and Chad Billingsley -- had their big seasons in 2007 or 2008, but there's not a team in baseball that wouldn't take the next five seasons of each.
* Tiny Tim fell to the 10th pick in the 2006 draft -- the one where the Royals took Luke Hochevar -- mostly because of concerns about his size and possible injuries. He pitched 227 innings last year, 50 more than he did the year before, a blatant violation of Verducci's rule. This info may have been more helpful before your fantasy draft.
You could make an argument that Greinke's future is as bright as anybody on the list (Clemens being the exception), because of the easy delivery, clean injury history, and reliance as much on movement and location as velocity. Heck, Greinke spent most of the spring trying to perfect his changeup.
His velocity was actually higher last September than it was in April, and there are people in baseball who think he was as good as any pitcher in the league last year.
You never know in sports, of course, and that's often the beauty. All of this is just another way of saying that signing Greinke looks like a really smart move, and it's probably OK for gun-shy Royals fans to fall in love.
Submitted by Sam Mellinger on April 8, 2009 - 7:32am.
