The Rangers would have had to send five of their top young players to Kansas City to obtain Zack Greinke, according to Jon Heyman of SI.com (on Twitter). The Royals were asking for Tommy Hunter, Derek Holland, Michael Kirkman, Jurickson Profar and Engel Beltre.
Holland posted a 4.08 ERA with 8.5 K/9 and 3.8 BB/9 last year in his age-23 season, Hunter posted a 3.73 ERA in 128 innings in 2010 and is under team control for five more years and Profar, Beltre and Kirkman ranked 2nd, 5th and 6th, respectively, on Baseball America's preseason list of top Rangers prospects.
The Royals ultimately obtained Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi from the Brewers for Greinke, Yuniesky Betancourt and $2MM. Now that Greinke has a cracked rib, the Rangers are probably glad they held onto their players.
Talk about a high price.
Nahhh it was probably worth it for player who couldnt pitch his first 4 years in the majors due to anxiety problems, pitched one phenomanal first half followed by a season and a half of an era near 4, albeit compiling a losing record during the whole process. Oh and dont forget his great attitude!!
what the hell are you babbling about?
Yeah, this guy sucks. Can’t WINZ. He’s like fourth in this WAR thing amongst all major league pitchers during the last three years. As General Sherman once said, WAR is hell. Wouldn’t want him on my team…NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!!!!1
-C
Possibly the worst post on MLBTradeRumors in the last 30 days.
That’s a pretty high (low?) bar, but I think you could be right.
That would have been some kind of bounty to rake in for Grienke.
That doesn’t seem too crazy. Maybe make a substitution for one of the pitchers, but the Rangers wouldn’t be harming their current team very much to add a Cy Young winner.
How would the Rangers “not be harming their current team”?? They are depending on Hunter and Holland as their #3 & 4 starters, and most likely either Kirkman (or Matt Harrison) as the #5. Beltre is by far the best OF prospect we have. Profar is one of the best middle infield prospects in the game. WAY WAY WAY too much to ask for a pitcher, albeit talented, who is a bit of a mental case who has only had 1 dominant year.
I don’t know how you define dominant but I put the threshold somewhere around 5 WAR. That’s a mark that Greinke has managed to hit for 3 straight years and he is just moving into his prime years.
Assuming he misses only a few starts I’ll wager that Greinke will be in the 6 WAR range this season.
And yeah – over the last 3 years there are exactly THREE other pitchers with more WAR than Greinke – maybe you heard of them? Halladay, Lee, and Lincecum. You are talking a gap of maybe half a WAR per season that separates Greinke from being the best pitcher in the game since 2008.
“Now that Greinke has a cracked rib, the Rangers are probably glad they held onto their players.”
Because he’s going to miss 2-3 starts?
And on top of that, do you think he would have been playing in the same exact pickup game of basketball if he’d have been in Texas? This injury isn’t a classic “it was bound to happen” kind of injury. It’s just a, “Whoops I was doing something athletic and got hurt,” injury.
A “Whoops I was doing something athletic and got hurt” injury that won’t have any lingering after-effects. He didn’t play basketball and hurt his throwing shoulder. A fractured rib will come back 110% percent (most bones that fracture grow back stronger).
hmmm, 110%… so if some overbearing owner broke every bone in every player on his team… his team would be invincible in 2012?
Get on it Steinbrenner!
Try telling that to Jacoby Ellsbury!
I’ll be shocked if that’s the only issue Zack has this year.
Why?
b/c zack has been so incredibly injury prone throughout his career with his terrible mechanics and questionable physical condition
Zack Greinke is probably one of the more athletic dudes in the league.
As I recall he didn’t get injured, he had anxiety problems. That’s a bit of a difference. Mental injury maybe (I guess, if you want to stretch it), but his physical condition is not in question. And those terrible mechanics won him a Cy Young.
Do you seriously just make crap up?
He has started over 30 games and pitched over 200 innings in each of the past 3 years. That’s the very definition of durable. His anxiety issues are from 4-5 years ago when he was in his early 20’s.
And, oh yeah, the dude is a freak athletically. We’re not talking about a 35 year old Mo Vaughn here.
Sarcasm?
Now compare that to the Brewers package…
KC basically wanted 1 1/2 if not more times the talent to not send him to the NL.
i literally laughed when i read those names. good thing Milwaukee is in the NL.
i get trading prospects for proven talent, but holy crap! if the rangers did that, and they didn’t win with greinke, you could have been looking at a bad team for some years.
I think it was ignorant of Grienke to not be taking care of himself before the season started. What the hell was he doing playing basketball?
Would you care to wager on how many baseball players play basketball in the offseason? I’d bet it is a lot.
Playing basketball is excellent cardio. More people should do it. And as I’m not aware of any epidemic of rib cracking due to playing basketball, it is more than fair to label this a freak injury.
The media’s overreaction to this has been beyond hilarious.
Greinke injury = THE END!1!
How about a treadmill? How about jogging? Plenty of better ways to get cardio w/o playing basketball. I agree that a cracked rib isn’t a typical basketball injury. However, injuries to his ankel, knee and fingers are. I guarantee you if ball players didn’t have 100% guaranteed contracts then fewer would engage in those other activities.
You can certainly hurt yourself on a treadmill or while jogging, especially with nagging tendinitis type injuries. I don’t know how much more of an injury risk playing pickup basketball is than those things.
He could have torn a rotator cuff playing golf. Point being, a freak injury can happen while you’re doing anything. Greinke wasn’t being “ignorant” playing basketball. He was engaging in an relatively non-dangerous athletic activity because, you know, he’s an athlete.
Exactly.
You can get hurt doing anything. Now if it came out that Greinke was playing in an ultra competitive league – then yeah. That’s some serious poor judgement. But a pick-up game? EVERYONE does that. So long as you take it easy the risk is fairly minimal.
Injuries never associated with riding a treadmill.
a) cracked ribs from being elbowed in the chest or falling awkwardlyon to the ground.
b) cracked orbital, nose, jaw, teeth or cheek bone from an elbow to the face.
c) broken or sprained finger from a thrown basketball or being hit on a shot.
Can freak injuries happen? Of course. This idea that injuries sustained from contact sports that border on violence vs that which can be had from a treadmill is an absurd arguement. There’s a reason why most teams want players to avoid playing basketball, football, hockey, bikes of all sorts and any extreme sport. THEY HAVE A HIGHER PROPENSITY TO INJURE YOU!!! Make players contracts non-guaranteed and I assure you these incidents will dwindle to almost none.
I’m tossing out the BS flag, he could have been thrown from the treadmill or had a twisted an ankle.
Some injuries from the past:
Getting out of a folding chair
Hotel pillow too hard
Powerful sneeze
Kicking a water cooler/folding chair
Jumping
Kitchen accidents (hot/sharp kitchenware)
Hit by a drunk driver
Now, the hotel pillow causing serious neck stiffness? A sneeze causing muscle pulls? Jumping and fracturing your ankle? Cutting or burning yourself while cooking? Being hit by a drunk driver? These are things that you have little control over or can happen at any given time because they happen when you’re going about your daily routine. Grienke cracking a rib playing basketball falls into this category. It’s probably something he did once a week or whenever he was with a certain friend. Can’t blame him for a surprise injury. I mean come on, you can get hurt lifting weights in your off season work outs or during a pre-season warm up! You can’t tell these guys to not do these kinds of things nor can you hold it against them.
“That is absurd!” -Rickjames
“Do you think God gets stoned? I think so… look at Dayton Moore.” – context by Robin Williams.
Haha…Robin Williams as in the comedian/actor?
You got it.
Absolutely ridiculous! That would have equated to Jon Daniels undoing the Teixeira heist. Royals were out of their minds.
If you dont ask you wont get them.
Right, this was the asking price before negotiating. We have no clue what they originally asked for from the Brewers but I am guessing it was more than what they ended up with.
there’s hardly anyone else in the brewers system worth having assuming theyre not trading gallardo or braun
Greinke only out for a few weeks with a cracked rib? Ha! Ya right. I had a tiny fracture on one of my ribs 4 months ago and I still have discomfort.
I hope he is only out for what they say but a rib injury is one of the worse, especially for a pitcher. Id say he will be out till at least end of may and he wont be comfortable till maybe the All Star break.
LOL! You should probably toughen up.
Have you ever had a broken rib? I’ll have to concur with Birds up there. I had the same injury, and it takes many months to completely heal. Something you can’t understand unless you have been through it.
Cracked ribs playing football. Strapped a chest protector on and played the next week. It wasn’t fun, it still hurt, and certainly I wasn’t playing in the bigs, but a month plus to recoup seems reasonable to me.
Now separated shoulders, torn ligaments in two of my fingers, or hamstring pulls … those were the HS injuries that did me in.
Ouch. Mine was much less severe than that. Had a few too many at the bar one night, and tripped and fell on my coffee table. That was interesting to try and explain to people. Probably took about 3 months or so to get back to 100%.
I haven’t experienced the injury but I’ve heard it’s pretty bad. I would expect a professional athlete, with professional trainers, to recover faster than most people though
the Brewers could get Zach Duke and Zach Jackson to fill in the void
it’s the ol’ ball saying: “You can never have enough Zachs”
Are the Brewers still happy they traded for Greinke? Hell yes, look at the pitchers they had the last couple of years. Suppan, Capuano, Davis, Bush, and a few 6th starters during injuries. Not a single one of those guys have a guaranteed job going into this spring.
Sure they lose a guy for a couple of starts that could pitch through it, but with the offense they have and getting an underrated Marcum they are very happy about the trades. Also one commenter said he will never resign there, which I disagree with. It is not a guarantee at all but Greinke has stated numerous times that he wants to be on a winner where he is comfortable and happy. That could happen anywhere.
Glad that deal didn’t happen. The Rangers pitchers alone would have been too high a price. I’m happy with the young talent the Rangers have and expect them all to perform well enough.
When Hunter is in the minors by midseason instead of being a complete fluke like he was last year this will look like a better offer, but yeah it was probably too much.
The Royals…what the bleep?! Insane asking price for a guy like Greinke. Glad the Rangers declined, because, that is too much to give. Hunter alone last season pitched as good if not better than Greinke. Holland when healthy is even better than Hunter and Kirkman did well when he came up last season. Beltre is the only one of the group I felt ok dealing, but Profar? Not a chance! That kid, is something special.
Okay, I’m all for believing in your guys, but this is ridiculous…
Greinke’s stats dominate Hunter’s, and it’s not even remotely close unless you’re using archaic statistics (W-L, ERA).
Greinke strikes out way more, walks less, doesn’t give up nearly as many DINGERZ, which accounts for a difference of more than 1.5 points of FIP. Even worse, Hunter managed a .255 BABIP to Greinke’s .305. Hunter was significantly luckier than the whole league (not just Greinke), meaning the disparity in their talent levels could potentially be even greater than the numbers suggest.
Never in my life did I ever think that I’d actually have to compare numbers between these two pitchers. Greinke is better in just about every way at this point, and the disparity between the two is large.
-C
but you haven’t accounted for his RASAD (Runs Allowed because of Social Anxiety Disorder)! That’s gotta add, like, 2.50 to his ERA right? RIGHT?
I think you forgot to carry the one. After doing some maths, I came up with eleventy.
-C
So, they asked Texas for roughly 3 times the talent of what the Brewers ended up giving them? Glad Texas turned that down.
as much as i love greinke, 6 years of all five of those players is way too much to give for 2 years of him.
Wanna know why Grienke’s ERA was over 4? BECAUSE HE HAD YUNIESKY BETANCOURT PLAYING SS!!!! Roy Halladay would see an increase in ERA with those yahoos behind him…
And if you are seriously trying to tell me that Tommy Hunter is better than Grienke, then just be quiet and go sit in the corner.
I’d think the Royals would have settled for Beltre, Profar, Kirkman and Holland.
Let’s break it down this way:
Odorizzi>Kirkman
Holland>Jeffress
Profar>>>Escobar
Beltre>Cain
Hell, they might have even removed Holland from the deal too…