An appreciation of Zack Greinke

As the year—and maybe his career—is coming to a close, the veteran shoves in his best outing of 2022.

After Tuesday, there may be one more start in Zack Greinke’s career. Or maybe not. Maybe, he will return to a club next year for another season. Maybe, he will return to Kansas City on another one-year deal. Or maybe Tuesday’s outing where he held the Detroit Tigers to four singles and no runs over six innings was the last start of his career. Maybe, he decides that was as good as he can possibly be and it’s time to close out his career on a high note.

The point is, with Zack Greinke, you just never know. The only thing you do know with certainty is that when you watch him pitch, you are viewing greatness at work. The other stuff? All part of his charm.

Last start or not, I hope you had a chance to watch Greinke’s outing on Tuesday. After the game, Mike Matheny said it was “vintage Greinke.” On that, I disagree. Matheny needed to add a qualifier to his statement. Something like “late career” needed to go between “vintage” and “Greinke.” Because the dude has completely reinvented himself as he’s moved into the twilight of his career. He can still dominate the way he cruised through the Tiger lineup, but it’s a different kind of domination.

Sport is a tough business. There’s an ever-so-brief window where a player is built for competitiveness. Few, like Greinke, can extend their career through adaptation, intelligence and guts. That’s what we’re watching now with Greinke.

And we need to appreciate it all while we still can.

From 2014 to 2019, Greinke won six consecutive Gold Gloves. Yeah, I’m aware that Gold Glove Awards aren’t the standard of excellence some would lead you to believe, but it’s still something.

Starting with his Cy Young Award-winning season in 2009, Greinke finished in the top 10 in Defensive Runs Saved for pitchers 11 times, topping the table in 2018 and 2019. This year, he’s fourth among all pitchers in DRS.

It’s just a joy to watch the guy field his position. Like we saw in the first inning on Tuesday.

How many pitchers at 38 years old are busting their ass off the mound to get that out? How many couldn’t do it?

He’s breaking for the bag the moment he sees the ball off the bat and heading toward the hole between first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino and second baseman Michael Massey. Fine defensive play from Massey as well, ranging to his left to even get to the ball.

The fact that Greinke was there to cover the bag was the cap to a brilliant all-around play.

According to Baseball Savant, Greinke is throwing six different pitches this season.

On Tuesday in Detroit, he scrapped the slider and the sinker—the two offerings he utilizes less frequently—and went exclusively with his main four pitches.

Greinke is no longer a strikeout pitcher. I mean, that was really never his forte, but he was always able to get his share. (Although he did lead the league with a 10.5 K/9 in 2011 with Milwaukee.) His whiff rate has hovered somewhere between 8 and 9 K/9 in the latter stages of his career. This season, it’s tumbled all the way to 4.9 K/9.

Hardly ideal, but he can still get the swing and miss on occasion. Such as this cutter against fellow future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera.

I love watching both of these guys because they seem to enjoy the fact that they’re still playing baseball. Watch Cabrera as he walks away from the plate; how he flips his right wrist. It’s a gesture of respect. It’s “what are you going to do? The guy still has it.”

It was one of six swings and misses he got on 86 pitches thrown. And it was one of two strikeouts for Greinke on the night.

It defies logic, doesn’t it? A guy who can barely get the ball up to 90 MPH, whose changeup is just a couple of ticks slower than his four-seamer, who doesn’t miss any bats, can find success in Major League Baseball in 2022.

It’s just difficult to pin down one or two things that Greinke does where he dominates because it just doesn’t happen that way anymore. Instead, he survives on that guile that is about generating a lot of weak contact.

On Tuesday, the Tigers put 20 balls in play against Greinke. The average exit velocity was 86.6 MPH. Only once was a ball hit harder than 100 MPH. That was the first batter of the game, Riley Greene who scalded a single at 111 MPH. After that, it’s a hodgepodge of topped grounders and weak fly balls.

The Tigers didn’t barrel a ball against Greinke all night.

In the third inning, ninth-place hitter Akil Baddoo singled with one out. This could’ve been a bit of a dangerous spot with the Tiger lineup turning over for the second time in the game. Greene was the next batter and you’ll know from the previous section that he had the hardest-hit ball of the night against Greinke.

So Grienke took matters into his own hands.

Baddoo isn’t that far off the bag, but he’s slow getting back. Hell, he doesn’t even get back, landing well short of where he needed to be. That’s a young player who lacks the awareness of Greinke. And it would seem he lacks awareness about Greinke.

The lightning-fast break off the rubber and the throw to first. It’s not even a good throw, bouncing in the dirt. (Nice play by Pasquantino to make the dig and the tag.) But it all happens so fast that Baddoo has no chance.

He was toast the minute Greinke decided he was going to make an aggressive move to first.

The seven innings Greinke completed was the first time he threw that deep into a game in 2022. It was just the second time all season he went past the sixth inning. His Game Score of 70 was his highest of 2022. It was, simply, his best start since returning to Kansas City.

Unfortunately, the Royals bullpen couldn’t hold the lead. The Tigers tied the game in the eighth and walked it off in the 10th. The 91st loss of the year for the Royals.

It’s been a lost season in Kansas City, but there have been several individual performances of note. From Bobby Witt Jr.’s debut season to Salvy Perez’s continued excellence there are always reasons to watch this team, even if those don’t translate to wins or overall team competitiveness. Greinke’s return has been one of the bright spots.

Nobody knows what Greinke’s plans are for 2023. But we do know that with a 1.7 fWAR in 25 starts covering over 130 innings, he’s done on the field exactly what he was brought back to Kansas City to do. And you know from the article in The Athletic earlier this week that he’s also done it in the clubhouse. If this is the end of his time in baseball or as a Royal, we’re fortunate to have had him back in Kansas City in 2022.

Thank you, Zack. For everything.