Old Time Family Baseball

A big topic of concern for the Royals are what they’re going to do with Zack Greinke. He’s coming off a down season after an awe astounding 2009 and while he’s under contract until 2012, he’s already made it clear that he’s tired of losing. Some think the Royals need to trade Zack Greinke while his value is highest so that the prospects can be ready to join with the rest of the Royals supremely talented class for 2012 and others think the Royals will need Zack Greinke at the front of the rotation to be able to truly compete when Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Mike Montgomery, etc etc etc join up with the club.

Jason Linden throws some wood onto the trade Zack Greinke fire with a recent post at the Hardball Times:

“Looking at PITCHf/x from the last two years, he doesn’t look like the same pitcher at all. He’s suddenly throwing a two-seamer almost 30 percent of the time, his changeup use has more than doubled (up to 12.2 percent now) and his fastball, slider and curve are all being used less.

Why has Greinke made these changes? I don’t know, but if we look at a longer trail of data, it starts to look like he’s compensating for diminished abilities. His velocity seems consistent, a good sign, but frankly, his curveball and slider just don’t move like they used to. And this isn’t a one-year aberration. The movement of these two pitches, especially the curveball, has been declining for years now. Four years ago, his curveball was breaking 8.1 inches horizontally, now it’s down to 4.5. His slider had a 5.7 inch horizontal break, but now it’s only 2.9, and the decline has been steady for both pitches.”

It’s unreasonable to expect a pitcher to ever post a ERA+ of 205 twice in a career, but if the Royals plan on extending Greinke, it will be with the expectation that he will be a top flight starter in the Major Leagues. If the PITCHf/x numbers hold true, and Greinke is losing his stuff, it might be best for Dayton Moore to deal him away before the rest of the league figures that out, too.