SATURDAY: Manager Chip Hale says he does not believe Greinke will pitch again this season, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic tweets.
FRIDAY 10:26pm: The MRI cleared Greinke of structural damage, as Piecoro tweets, though he’ll likely miss his next scheduled start. That’s obviously good news for Arizona, though it would certainly be preferable if Greinke is able to return for at least one more outing before shutting things down for the offseason.
7:12pm: The Diamondbacks will send righty Zack Greinke in for an MRI on his right shoulder, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports. He isn’t with the team at present and it remains to be seen whether he’ll be able to make his final two starts of the year.
Greinke did not show any indications of a problem during his last outing — he was effective, though it was his third-straight with at least four walks — but reported shoulder inflammation thereafter. He did report improvement as of today, per manager Chip Hale, but the team is obviously concerned enough to order up imaging.
Needless to say, this isn’t the way Arizona hoped that Greinke’s already-rough season would wrap up. The soon-to-be 33-year-old sports an uncharacteristic 4.37 ERA with 7.6 K/9 and 2.3 BB/9 over his 158 2/3 innings on the year. He missed time previously with an oblique strain.
While most of Greinke’s peripherals fell within range of his career norms, he was particularly susceptible to the long ball this year, allowing 1.3 dingers per nine. His average fastball largely held steady, dropping about half a mile an hour from his prior three campaigns, but both his four-seam and two-seam offerings were markedly less effective than in the recent past (by measure of Pitch F/X pitch values).
Greinke still profiles as a highly useful starter — he’d surely secure the largest contract in this winter’s weak free agent class were he again eligible — but the remainder of his massive contract looks to be under water at this point in time. Greinke is owed $157.5MM over the next five years, a monumental sum for a hurler his age, which has led some to suggest that the D-Backs ought to seek a trade partner. While the club’s current front office has stated that it isn’t inclined to take that path, organizational change could shift the calculus. Any uncertainty in Greinke’s shoulder, though, would largely scuttle any such ideas — at least until he can demonstrate that he is healthy.
LaRussa and Stewart are the two dumbest FO executives around
The sad part about this is that the DBacks have one of the best rosters in the NL. They’ll never more than a .500 team with the current coaching staff and FO, though.
If you use 1 of very liberally, maybe. There is a reason that their pre-season projections still had them pegged as a mediocre team
They have one of the worst pitching staffs and by far the worst bullpen.
Reds would like to disagree. Not that that means the Dbacks are good, but no one’s pitching is as bad as the Reds and it’s not even remotely close.
the reds bullpen is working on historically bad haha
The bullpen is atrocious, last night is a perfect example.
A rotation with Greinke-Miller-Corbin-Ray-De La Rosa/Bradley would have been considered one of the better if not top rotations in the league prior to this season. The bullpen wasn’t thought to be that strong, but with Delgado, Hudson, Chafin and Ziegler all having nice seasons in 2015 no one thought it would be as poor as it has been this year.
The pitching staff had (and still has) the potential to be at least league average. Certainly if Bradly and Shipley finally start trending towards an ERA under 5…
Hopefully Miller and Greinke (to a lesser extent) can figure out what made them so successful earlier. If the can’t, I don’t see the D-backs competing for a playoff spot in the next couple of years
And that should be a big exclamation point on the utterly disappointing season for the Dbacks.
One could argue LA escaped from under the burden of this contract thereby allowing them more space to develop younger, cheaper talent.
MRI’s are not conclusive in ruling out an injury., they don’t catch everything A shoulder injury explains the down season. No way to trade him now. better make sure those insurance premiums are paid up. Better hope you paid for insurance.
Shut him down for the year, there nothing for him to gain by continuing this year
I agree. There is nothing to gain and only adds risk. He’s too expensive to risk him getting damaged in any way by playing him. Man though I gotta say, I hate seeing ANY player get injured. I want to see the best players out there playing, even if it’s a guy I hate (like Puig), I don’t want him to get injured because he’s an exciting player to watch and you want to beat their best guys.
I agree. I have no idea why the author stated it would be preferable to have him make one more start which would have zero upside
I’d assume they’d want him to demonstrate some health going into the offseason?
It’s good for the club to know where they stand and what areas they might need to improve. If Greinke makes another start and comes out feeling fine, then you can have more confidence going into next season. If he isn’t able to throw, then you go through the offseason not knowing what to expect. The worse case would then be when he starts ramping up for the spring and he has a recurrence of pain, and it’s too late for you to pursue other options.
Of course at Greinkes price point they won’t really have the means to go after a replacement.
But there is some credence to knowing the health of the player, and also the player having confidence that everything is fine and he can have a normal offseason. I remember Harvey saying he wanted to make one appearance when he was returning from his TJ surgery towards the end of the season, claiming it would give him a mental boost that everything was fine going into the offseason. No one likes the fear of the unknown.
But I also understand you’d be understandably cautious with such a huge investment.
Just good for thought 🙂
Which move was worst, miller or Grienke.
I think Greinke may have trade value at some point. I mean let’s say he comes out next season and kicks butt (which he very well could), AZ could trade him to a contending team, eat some salary but get some decent prospects back. So what have they done? Basically bought some prospects for whatever the cost is of the salary they eat.
I mean if you’re a contending team, and you get a chance to get Greinke in decent form at a lower AAV and give up some prospects. He’ll give you a serious chance to win a WS.
What do you think is the worst?
If no team wanted to sign Greinke last winter, why would they give up prospects in order to do it now?
Other teams wanted him, just not for that price.
Sorry WestCoastryan but you really think zero teams wanted to sign Greinke? Hahaha hilarious. Ok he had no offers. No suitors.
And of course teams would trade for him now as Arizona would be stuck paying a big chunk of the contract and the amount would determine what kind of prospect package they offer.
Thanks @One Fan. I think you described it well. If you could get Greinke now and AZ eats salary so it costs you $15 million a year or maybe $20 million a year and some prospects. I’d take him. Bearing in mind he’s still pitching half his games in AZ where his home ERA is 4.81 vs 3.84 on the road. If he pitched at AT&T half his games his ERA would be be way lower so if I were SF, I’d take him if I could get him at a decent price.
Also @TheWestCoastRyan reports have it that the Dodgers and Giants tried really hard to sign Greinke just didn’t come up with the same amount of money.
I’m pretty sure he meant no team wanted to sign Greinke at what he ended up signing for. The dodgers offered something like 40m (and 1 less year) than what the dbacks ended up paying him.
So now any team taking him on would be receiving his age 33-38 seasons instead of 32-37. On it’s face, that just makes less sense for teams to take on additional back end years while receiving less front end years as well. Add to that the fact that Greinke has been pretty mediocre this year, and you’re looking at a pretty negative trade asset just to give away. If you start talking about the team getting any sort of talent return while moving him, you are talking about them eating a pretty substantial sum of money to move him..
Id say Miller as well. Greinke cost money and a draft pick.
Miller cost money and multiple regarded prospects.
History has shown us that it’s not impossible to move what is considered to be dead money (Kemp, Vernon Wells, Kevin Brown, Manny to name a few).
I feel like replacing young talent will always be more difficult than dumping salary.
I think Miller was the worst
One cost money, one cost talent.
Depends who you ask.
Because he was so bad, Miller was sent to the minors and will have one added year of control. This greatly enhances a dismal start to his DBacks career. This became a throw away year for the team, but they should have at least a couple more good years to make something happen. Pollock and Peralta should be healthy. 2/3 and their most productive OF. Starting pitching should be better from the multiple canidates. they will need to add quiet a few arms in relief to fix that glaring problem. Thankfully, it’s one of the least costly to address.
The interesting thing is that both Greinke and Miller performed poorly, but this isn’t the end. Miller should have 3 more years and Greinke 4 to provide value (many BIG contracts start out looking bad, but often after a first season with too many expectations, many players settle in and provide a lot more value e.g. Hanely Ramirez).
The Diamondbacks should, repeat should, be in a good spot with less than a $100m payroll. If Kendrick will use some of the $1.5B a year added from the new TV deal, they run the budget up in the next few years and still be below the luxury tax. This is what bothers me as a fan; all that new revenue and he’s still pinching pennies with the team that’s “all in”. I initially thought Greinke was a signal of more spending, but the deals after showed Kendrick would still demand a tight budget. So, Segura was a cheap gamble. The #2 pitcher wasn’t bought with money (like Cueto, the Shark or Leake), but came from future cost in prospects for a more affordable asset in Miller. Ouch!
The DBacks really do have quality players in good contracts, but they’ll need more help to go all the way to being a much improve, playoff team.
$1.5b a year tv deal?