Every player that reaches the majors has a hot-stove tale to tell. They’re drafted or signed into the pro ranks to start out. Quite a few are traded or move via free agency even before reaching the bigs. You have to be selected or signed onto a 40-man roster before you can put on a uniform in a MLB contest. And then there’s the inevitable moment when it all goes away … whether through retirement at the end of a lengthy career or, in many cases, a trip into DFA limbo.
All of these stories are etched on the pages of MLBTR. Some are more interesting than others. A few of these transactional career arcs touch upon many major elements of the hot stove league — the front office game that shapes the underlying sport that we watch on TV.
The transactional saga of Zack Greinke, the venerable right-hander whose latest stop is the Houston Astros, is certainly among the most notable in recent memory …
Professional Entry
- The Royals took Greinke, an unusually polished high-school hurler, with the sixth overall pick of 2002 draft.
Prospect Status
- Greinke quickly emerged as one of the game’s top prospects.
- Baseball America rated Greinke 54th overall ahead of the 2003 season and 14th overall in advance of 2004.
Early Career
- At just 20 years of age, Greinke turned in in 24 starts of 3.97 ERA ball in his debut season of 2004. But he struggled badly in his sophomore season.
- Greinke battled mental health issues and was ultimately diagnosed with depression and social anxiety disorder. At the time, his outlook as a professional baseball player was of secondary concern. SI.com’s John Donovan wrote: “Greinke’s tortured story is, on the one end, a sad one, but on this side there is hope that it may yet turn out well.”
Extension
- Greinke reemerged in 2007, then turned in a breakout 2008 season.
- The Royals signed Greinke to a four-year, $38MM extension in advance of the 2009 season, adding two years of team control. He won the American League Cy Young Award in the ensuing campaign.
2010 Blockbuster
- The Royals decided to entertain trade offers on Greinke, by then regarded as one of the game’s best pitchers, in the 2010-11 offseason. Greinke later indicated his desire to be traded.
- A monumental set of Winter Meetings trade talks ensued. Royals Review has exhaustively documented the contemporaneous rumor mill. Greinke reportedly indicated he would exercise his no-trade rights to block a deal to the Nationals.
- The Brewers eventually acquired Greinke and Yuniesky Betancourt, and $2MM from the Royals for Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi.
- Greinke ended his tenure with the Royals with a 3.82 ERA in 1,108 innings over seven seasons.
2012 Trade Deadline Swap
- Greinke continued to perform well in Milwaukee, but the Brewers stumbled.
- In July of 2012, the Angeles acquired Greinke for Jean Segura, Ariel Pena and John Hellweg.
- Greinke ended his tenure with the Brewers with a 3.67 ERA in 294 2/3 innings over two seasons.
2012-13 Free Agency
- Greinke entered the market as the top player available and drew interest from numerous big-market teams.
- During the Winter Meetings, the Dodgers signed Greinke to a six-year, $147MM contract.
- Greinke ended his tenure with the Angels with a 3.53 ERA in 89 1/3 innings over one season.
2015-16 Free Agency
- Greinke opted out of his contract after a 2015 season in which he led the National League with a 1.66 ERA.
- Expectations were that he would re-sign with the Dodgers, but the Diamondbacks suddenly entered the market with a massive offer.
- The Diamondbacks signed Greinke to a six-year, $206.5MM contract, setting a new record for average annual value ($34.42MM).
- Greinke ended his tenure with the Dodgers with a 2.30 ERA in 602 2/3 innings over three seasons.
2019 Trade Deadline Swap
- After a rough initial season in Arizona, Greinke continued to produce excellent results even as he entered his mid-thirties.
- In a last-minute agreement consummated just before the trade deadline, the Astros acquired Greinke for Corbin Martin, J.B. Bukauskas, Seth Beer, and Joshua Rojas.
- Greinke ended his tenure with the Diamondbacks with a 3.40 ERA in 714 2/3 innings over four seasons.
Future
- Greinke’s contract runs through 2021. The Astros took on $53MM of the remaining salary obligations.
- With the Astros, Greinke has a 3.02 ERA in 62 2/3 innings over one season.
First Ballot for sure
Definitely agree.
95 more wins and I agree
If something happened to him and he struggled, I think he still gets in but probably not first ballet maybe 2nd or 3rd
i do hope you are joking. wins are a joke of a stat in a general sense and should never be the deciding factor in a player’s candidacy
Hahaha
You’re joking right?
Let’s just let in anyone with 205 wins
Let’s set the bar lower and put Matt Cain in with the veterans committee or the freak in bc he was so dominant for 4 years
Gtfo
Plus, grienkes best game was when Quentin broke his collar bone
So we’re only voting in pitchers with at least 300 wins?
with Harold baines getting in anything is possible
By your logic Randy Johnson is just barley a HOF’er and Pedro Martinez is an undeserving HOF’er.
Yea, wins are an overrated stat. Randy Johnson went 16-14 in a season where he led the league in Ks, era+, fip, and whip all en route to a second place cy young, and probably deserving of the actual cy. Just like putting to much emphasis on RBI for a hitter, wins do not provide a clear picture of performance for pitchers.
Basing success on wins is archaic. When Greinke won his CY in 2009 there were six players with more wins. With your thinking, Greinke didn’t deserve the award because he only had 16 wins. A pitcher has only so much control over wins.
Yup. And Craig Biggio. Seriously. It’s become the Hall of the Very Good.
Bobby Grich should be in though.
Yeah let’s get guys like Koufax and his 165 wins outta there.
Dude, Degrom has been baseball’s best pitcher over the past 5 or so years, and the Mets just don’t provide run support for him. He IMO will never get to 205, so I guess he’s not a HOF talent. Get outta here.
Seriously. When Baines got it I gave up on the HOF. Go ahead and let Jamie Moyer, Cecil Fielder, and Bernie Williams in.
Didn’t John Olerud dominate for a couple of years? Toss him in!
Hey, Darin Erstad got 240 hits in 2000. Open the doors!
Baines has to be the single worst HOF elected….and the hall already had a bunch of iffy guys in it. Greinke pitched throughout the second part of the steroid era and still put up solid numbers. As long as he doesn’t fall off of a cliff in the next 2-3 years, he should be a first ballot guy. It’s always a bit of a crapshoot w. who is eligible in a given year, but his dominance during the steroid era and on big stages (he didn’t pad his stats on crap teams like Dan Marino did back in the day in the NFL).
Yeah, Baines was a very good player, but there’s no way that he should be in the Hall of Fame.
Babies in close to the worst, but I give the top spot to Goose Goosage or Bert Blyleven.
You consider Craig Biggio to be just “very good.” A guy who played for 20 years for one team, had over 3000 hits and over the course of those 20 years, could be counted on to get on base better than 1 out of every 3 times?
Damn. That is Hall of Fame material.
At least Biggio had 3,000 hits and played multiple positions. Baines was primarily a DH.
Tim Raines ?
Wins?? LOL wins?? Please Greinke has been a top 5 pitcher in baseball for the last decade and sure fire hall of famer. Cain was on the right track but he fell off hard. Cain also turned terrible as soon as he got paid. Greinke was so good during his big LA contract it was underpaid and he parlayed it into a bigger one. If you think Greinke is not a HoFer quit watching baseball.
It’s no guarantee that he will have a team hat on his plaque but for the exercise of debate: as of right now would he wear a Royals cap for his most extensive action and the team he won a CY or the Dodgers with which he peaked?
id think it would be LAD given it seems from this article that he might have bad memories of KC. granted, im not him so i cant confirm that.
If he had to pick, I’d agree it’d probably be LA. I think those seasons turned his career from a pretty good career on the outside of the HOF, to a for sure HOFer.
Going back to lowtalker, 24 pitchers have at least 300 wins and there’s 83 currently in the HOF. Boot them!
He is a quirky guy so I definitly see no logo on his HOF hat. It should be Royals since they drafted him and he spent the most years there.
yeah i can see him going no logo. besides the length of time in KC most of his teams have a claim to his logo, so i can see him staying neutral here.
I don’t think he’d go in with a blank cap regardless, but especially if he wins a title with Houston or someone else down the road. He’s sort of a martyr Ace.
yup
Maybe a a good pitcher, but a better mercenary when it comes to $$.
oh how criminal that he wants to be properly compensated for his talents and the teams that sign him always want to get rid of him before his contract is up.
Dude has flat out said he’s about the money. That is my point. That’s all. If you want to extrapolate something else I guess that’s up to you and feel free to be the annoying poster you are.
Mercenary: “primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics”
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Bad term to use. He signed for the most money, but only twice. And he landed with good teams both times. This isn’t like Jason Bay or Robinson Cano, where they took better money, but were going to disappear forever.
If it’s about the money,why is he not in NYC? “Oh he doesn’t like the big city” so it’s money but not NY or Boston money.
And it’s one of the few times I say BS about a mental illness. He just doesn’t want to go and sucked in the suckers about mental illness. He’s got strong enough numbers,but he’s an idiot.
He almost quit baseball due to his condition and you’re calling him an idiot? Umm…
Dave’s a moron
Most players are all about the money. Greinke refreshingly speaks his mind, unlike most players.
Greinke will have earned just over $282 million after 2021 and has already accounted for 71.0 bWAR which means he’s provided twice the production (1.0 bWAR = just under $4MM per versus the standard $8MM) compared to what he’s earned. So not sure how he can be faulted for anything he’s done related to contracts.
I think he has been great and borderline HOF now who can solidify that with 1-3 more good seasons.
That said, 8MM per WAR was not the standard early in his career. Expected WAR per $$ goes up as contracts get bigger.
If you are going to figure a good, $MM per WAR that is a very complex and complicated math problem.
He may be about the money but he’s obviously putting in the work to keep himself amongst the best in the game so there’s really no issue.
I rarely if ever fault a pro athlete about making a money decision. This is their livelihood. If an accountant was offered $75k, $100k, or $120k…it’d be a hard argument to get angry that the person went w. the highest offer.
The average pro career can be incredibly short, so the athlete needs to maximize their earning potential. For a lot of men and women, this is the only chance they will remotely be able to touch this kind of money in their lifetime. Many don’t have good post-career job options, so now is when they need to earn.
My hat is off to Greinke for putting in the hard work, getting treatment in the middle of everything, and then coming out the back end still dominating at the top level of his sport.
When’s the last time a team went 4-4 on prospects in a trade. Cain, Escobar, Jeffries, Odorizzi all 4 have had quite a bit of success at the MLB level, not all with the royals though.
yeah that was a heck of a return, especially given how the former two really helped KC on it’s path to a title just a few years later.
Not many, reminds me of the Indians trading Colon to the Expos for lee Stevens, cliff lee, Grady Sizemore, and Brandon Phillips
This trade was one of the first I thought of, partly bc I’m a Big Sexy fan and have followed his career since he was throwing smoke.
I remember before the season started there some Padres fans that discussed Myers for Greinke in a bad contract swap.
It’s always fun to go back to old articles and see how badly people misjudged and shot down those ideas.
He’s a damn good pitcher, and I actually have more faith in his ability to age well than I do for Kershaw or Madbum, or just about any former ace now climbing into his 30s. He’s already had a pretty incredible career. I’ll always remember him as a Dodger, even though he’s played with many different clubs over his career.
I hope he can keep pitching well (except when he faces my team, of course 😉
I work with a lot of young pitchers
Having Greinke in Houston helps because I can just tell people to watch him
The guy won’t throw a strike unless he has to.
Just the art of pitching.
Never gives in to a hitter and will expand the strike zone.
Against teams like the Yankees it hurts but others Greinke can dominate without breaking a sweat.
Plus he is an outstanding fielder for the position. Just a great athlete in general.
As a fan, it annoys me that Greinke seems to be living on his reputation as being a solid athlete when piling up gold gloves as a pitcher. That said, he is a heck of an athlete, but I think more guys could have won during his five (?) consecutive year stretch of GGs.
but that is what the gold glove is about.
It rarely goes to the best fielder at a position.
It almost always goes to the player at the position who’s fielding exploits get talked about the most.
Post some Zack Greinke stories, since they are few and far between. Anybody can read a bio like this or look up his stats. Post something fun, like that Alex Gordon story.
From the Zack Greinke wants to be traded post:
The club is reportedly looking for even more than Travis Snider and Kyle Drabek in a deal with Toronto, a package that the Blue Jays are not willing to part with regardless.
yeah i saw that and chuckled. Royals were lucky to have made the deal with the Crew in hindsight.
ANGELES
HOF, no question! Overcoming a debilitating condition and excelling for every team he has pitched on. Ridiculous stuff. And he’s not done yet. (Even though he hasn’t pitched on the yankees.)
these factors combined may speak just as loudly as his ability overall. the ability to get it done under whatever the circumstances and overcome the odds are hallmarks of being great.
Although I think the Dbacks should not sign deals like these, I loved Zach in AZ. He always gave the club a chance to win, put up very good at bats, and his interviews were always fun to watch.
I don’t think wins and era are the best indicators of elite pitchers because those are also team and ballpark stats, but Zach is likely a hall of fame pitcher because of his WHIP, K/BB ratio, how many innings he amassed, his defense (gold gloves), and his rank as an offensive pitcher in the NL. I’d like to see him get even more playoff experience because he’s looked pretty good on the biggest stage.
What do you think about the D-Backs signing Bum? I wonder how he’ll pitch into his 30s relative to how Greinke might have for AZ.
I think he plays at least 2 more years after this contract at a high level. He is awesome.
Greinke’s Mullet is First-Ballot, without question. He’ll strike out a 3,000th batter this year or next year and then we can argue if he’s 1st, 2nd, 8th, whatever ballot.
Max Scherzer is better. It would have been interesting to have Greinke, Strasburg, Gio and Zimmermann in the same rotation.
Absolutely agree Scherzer is better, but that is like going “Well….sure, Nelson Cruz is a good hitter, but he is no Barry Bonds.” The guy can still be elite in his era, but still not be up to the level of some of the all-time greats.
Hellweg and the angry inch!
Wins are the only thing that matters. How do you earn a World Series championship? You WIN! Hall of Fame pitchers need to WIN!
Teams need to win. Pitchers don’t.
Until the rules change, W as an individual stat are worthless.
You can’t count a stat for or against a guy when he has such little control over it.
A guy can pitch 9 perfect innings and not get a win.
A guy can give up 20 runs in a game and get a win.
Completely meaningless stat