Greinke losing his grip on place in starting rotation for playoffs
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Sunday afforded Zack Greinke a chance to quiet the narrative surrounding him. He made a home start against an awful team littered with lefties. Arizona arrived at Minute Maid Park with 100 losses — the first team to reach that pitiful plateau. Six of the Diamondbacks’ nine starters hit lefthanded.
Greinke limits lefthanders to a sub-.200 batting average. They have a .556 OPS against him in 270 plate appearances this season. Prior to Sunday, only six of the home runs launched off Greinke this season came from lefthanded hitters. Pavin Smith smacked an 87.6 mph fastball into the rightfield seats to make it seven.
The solo home run spoiled Greinke’s shutout with one out in the third inning. He managed only five more outs. The Diamondbacks peppered him for four hits. Two came from lefthanded hitters. Arizona scored four more times before manager Dusty Baker went to his bullpen and intensified the scrutiny around his most veteran starting pitcher.
Greinke left with a 5.23 ERA in 531⁄3 innings since the All-Star break. A 5.92 fielding independent pitching (FIP) across the same span does not suggest rotten luck is the root cause. He’s yielded 13 of his career-worst 29 home runs during the dismal stretch. Greinke allowed 16 home runs in his 1151⁄3 pre-All Star Game frames.
Greinke’s place in Houston’s four-man postseason rotation seems tenuous. Legitimate debate is warranted whether to carry him on the playoff roster at all, but omitting Greinke altogether seems unlikely. A six-time All-Star and former Cy Young Award winner is afforded a longer leash than most.
“He’s a Hall of Fame pitcher,” pitching coach Brent Strom said Monday. “I think he’s intuitive enough to understand what he needs to do.”
Pedigree can carry Greinke only so far. Four other Astros starters have outperformed him over the past three months. He does not deserve a playoff start, especially in a potential series against a Chicago White Sox lineup loaded with righthanded hitters.
Four of the Sox’s best hitters — Tim Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert and reigning American League MVP Jose Abreu — hit righthanded. They have just three true lefthanded-hitting position players on their 40-man roster.
After Sunday’s start, righthanded hitters have a .286 batting average and .508 slugging percentage against Greinke in 418 plate appearances. Among pitchers who’ve thrown at least 80 innings, only five have allowed a higher slugging percentage to righties. Six have permitted a higher batting average.
Last week, Greinke bemoaned the inability to get a “free strike” against righthanded hitters and their reluctance to chase any of his pitches. Greinke’s 21.6 percent whiff rate is his lowest since Statcast started tracking pitches in 2015.
The diminished velocity on his four-seam fastball does not allow him to make any minuscule mistakes. When Greinke can’t elicit chase, it forces him to throw more fastballs inside the strike zone.
Righthanders have a .555 slugging percentage and 18 extra-base hits against his fastball. Greinke’s slider — the breaking ball he uses against righties — gave him considerable trouble earlier this season but has been better lately. Complementing it with a fastball in better locations could start to solve some of Greinke’s problems.
“I think it’s just been some misplaced pitches,” Strom said of Greinke’s second-half struggles. “Coming off the (COVID-19) that he had, trying to get back in the swing of things. I think what we’re possibly looking at is tweaking some pitch usage, and maybe that will help a little bit. His command is still good. What’s killed him hasn’t been the base hits he’s given up. It’s that they’ve come in bunches.”
Greinke has two more regularseason starts to author a turnaround and render this discussion moot. Even if he does, the Astros face a fascinating dilemma. Stowing Greinke in a postseason bullpen will put him in wholly unfamiliar circumstances. The 37year-old righthander hasn’t made a major league relief appearance since 2008.
Asking Greinke to collect meaningful outs as a reliever seems unwise. Asking either Jose Urquidy or Luis Garcia for the same task is less stress-inducing. Both pitched in the tandem system while coming through the Astros’ minor league ranks.
Lance McCullers Jr. and Framber Valdez are cemented as the first two starters. Baker and Strom could bring either Urquidy or Garcia from the bullpen in either game to secure a win and stay away from a still-unreliable middle of the bullpen. It would leave Greinke slotted to start the fourth game — one that might not even happen in a five-game series.
If it does, though, Houston can’t feel confident in the starter it would send to the mound.