Well, we haven't seen much of this. Nobody has. Not what Zack Greinke is doing. You probably didn't need to read that here, but what Greinke is doing is close to impossible.
In six starts, Greinke has pitched six games good enough that if you were playing a video game against him you'd think about hitting reset.
You might know the numbers but they're fun to look at so here goes: 6-0 in six starts, three of them complete games, two of them shutouts, 45 IP, 30 H, 2 ER, 8 BB, 54 K, 0.40 ERA (!). His average Game Score is 76.
Baseball Reference's wonderful Play Index goes back to 1954, and it brings up 28 starting pitchers who won their first six games of a season. They all did very well, as you can imagine, but only Fernando Valenzuela's first six games of Fernando-Mania in 1981 compare to what Greinke is doing.
Here's a cross-sports reference that probably doesn't work: Greinke hasn't given up a single earned run in five of his six starts, 83.3 percent, which is higher than the free throw shooting of NBA MVP LeBron James.
Think about that. So far this season, Greinke is a better bet to not give up an earned run than the NBA MVP is to hit a free throw*. Ridiculous.
* Of course, LeBron is still a better dunker, and has better commercials. So there's that.
The Royals are a below-.500 team in games that Greinke doesn't pitch, but they are so far literally unbeatable in his starts. Zack Mania is here now, and his teammates are along for the ride.
I usually try to make this blog look forward, or at least deeper, but that's not working this morning. I can't get Greinke's dominance out of my head.
Forced to look forward, you have to wonder what Kyle Davies thinks about all this. Nobody expects him to match what Greinke's doing, of course. Davies is the Royals' third-best starting pitcher, and that's a good thing to be, but in some ways this has to be like following Elvis on stage, or Marissa Miller in the swimsuit competition.
There were some holding out cynicism for Greinke's start last night because they decided that the SI cover jinx didn't apply to his previous start because the issue wasn't on newsstands yet. Well, everyone's read Poz's story in SI and regular readers here know this blog's stance that the best Greinke story of the year is this one that ran in the Star's baseball preview section.
Well, safe to say no jinx. White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said it was the best performance he can remember seeing by a pitcher, and even made a typical (for him) off-color joke about wanting the daughter he doesn't have to marry Greinke.
There is a difference in this team that I've heard pointed out a few different places. The last Royals team to matter -- actually, the only Royals team to matter since the strike -- was in 2003 and they had that crazy We Believe thing going on, with manager Tony Pena saying off-the-wall things and doing-off-the-wall things, Angel Berroa winning the Rookie of the Year, all sorts of one-time-only happenings, and it worked, for the better part of one summer.
This is not a We Believe team. We'll probably explore this thought more as the summer goes on, but this team doesn't have a gimmick, doesn't do schtick. This team has the attitude of, Yeah, we're good, so what? That's a huge difference, and represents a culture change of sorts. They are pretty good right now.
And when Greinke pitches, they're just great.
The problem with Greinke is he's way to inconsistent for me, when he's good he's very good but sometimes he's very average and that sometimes costs us games. The jury is out for me. direct mail