Zack Greinke too calm for a mania, but fully deserving

Friday in Jon SooHoo can be found at the LA Photog Blog.

By Jon Weisman

Considering how hard it is to steal a headline these days from Yasiel Puig, just the fact Zack Greinke can get one speaks pretty loudly.

Not that speaking loudly is in Greinke’s nature to begin with, but that’s another matter.

In the Dodgers’ 7-0 victory Friday over Arizona, Greinke was at his best – and doesn’t that sound redundant?  Greinke, as you must know by now, has the longest streak of starts without allowing more than two runs in at least a century.

In a season plus a month and a half with the Dodgers, Greinke has a 2.49 ERA and 143 ERA+ with 265 baserunners against 209 strikeouts in 247 innings. In fact, in the 40-year-old free agency era, Greinke is well on pace toward becoming the greatest pitcher signing in Dodger history.

 (The top competition is the underrated Kevin Brown deal, which produced approximately 25 wins above replacement, depending on your source, through Brown and his trade value in yielding Jeff Weaver and Yhency Brazoban.)

Others have begun looking more closely at how Greinke has become so crazy effective. Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports:

… Greinke has pitched past 2,000 innings. His pitching arm bears no scars. He, too, stands fairly firmly against regrets. Several years ago, when it was still his best pitch, Greinke simply stopped throwing his slider so much. He’d leaned heavily on the slider, even won a Cy Young Award riding it and his fastball, and then he’d go to bed with his elbow feeling somewhat “different,” he said, or wake up the next morning that way, and one day decided this wasn’t the best way to a long and successful career.

Greinke, being Greinke, was perhaps just self-aware enough to change. He still throws plenty of sliders, but hopes to cap them at 15, maybe 20, per start, thereby balancing his desire to win with the hope to pitch again in five days. Perhaps the ulnar collateral ligament goes a thread at a time, he doesn’t really know, but if so, he was going to budget his threads, and not pitch straight through his elbow by the time he was 30 and then be no good to himself or his team for a year.

He finds other ways, and reaches for the slider when the at-bat requires it. And, actually, he admitted, if it’s one of those games, when it’s absolutely necessary, he’ll choose the game over his elbow and throw more.

“In what I would deem a very important at-bat or a very important pitch, yes, I would throw the slider,” he said. “But with the pitcher up and no one on, you might be able to strike him out on three pitches. Do you really want to throw three sliders to a pitcher? Is it really smart of me to expend full energy on a slider in that situation?”

On Saturday, the Giants loaded the bases with two out in the first inning.

“If it takes eight sliders to get that guy out,” Greinke said, “I’m going to throw eight sliders.” …

Or, as Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles offered:

Greinke is quiet and he thinks a lot about his craft. At some point, he seems to have devised a new plan of attack. Instead of exerting maximum energy on every pitch, he exerts maximum game plan in every start, mixing up an assortment of above average pitches rather than smothering hitters with his nastiest.

“Each has its strength, because when you could just throw as hard as you can and throw a slider as hard as you can, you feel dominant, you feel powerful,” Greinke said. “Right now, you have to use your brain more.”

It’s borne out in the numbers. No. 3-5 hitters in opposing lineups this year are 14 for 69 (.203) with eight walks and 26 strikeouts against Greinke this year. Greinke has allowed nine doubles and seven homers this year, but all except three doubles have been with the bases empty. With men on base, opponents are hitting .160/.238/.227.

It’s an achievement worth shouting from the rooftops, but we’ll settle for a little 14-point bold-faced type.