If he's so inclined, Zack Greinke can end his six-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers after only three seasons at the end of 2015. He just better make sure he has a really good season first.
Seven starts in, it wouldn't be fair to call his 2015 season "really good." It's been more like "superb."
Greinke's seventh start went down Monday night against the Miami Marlins at Dodger Stadium, and it ended with him contributing to a dramatic 5-3 Dodgers victory with seven innings of one-run ball. He was denied his sixth straight win when the Dodgers bullpen turned a 2-1 lead into a 3-2 deficit in the ninth inning, but he at least secured his 15th straight non-defeat dating back to last season.
More relevant to this discussion, though, is how Greinke maintained his status as arguably the National League's top pitcher in the early going.
Greinke entered Monday's start with a 1.54 ERA, which was already the best in the Senior Circuit. He exited with a 1.52 ERA, which is still the best in the Senior Circuit. He also ranks fourth in innings with 47.1 and first in RA9-WAR—that being FanGraphs' runs allowed-based version of Wins Above Replacement—at 2.1.
Granted, Greinke's 2015 season is far from over. Health permitting, he likely has another 25 or so starts still to make. Much could change in these 25 or so starts.
So far, however, Greinke is pitching like a guy who wants to find a massive payday in the coming winter.
As Eric Stephen of True Blue LA reported in February, Greinke isn't going to make a decision on the opt-out clause in his six-year, $147 million contract until the end of the year. But there is no player in baseball more practical than him, and his willingness to follow the money is well known. If he determines that opting out at the end of the year is in his best interest, he'll do it.
In his own words, according to Stephen: "I'm sure [the Dodgers are] open to me taking a cheap deal also. It's just a matter of seeing what is working."
Given that opting out would mean turning down $77 million in guaranteed money through the 2018 season, Greinke would have to be sure of a bigger payday awaiting on the free-agent market. This, of course, is another way of saying he better keep pitching like he's been pitching.
Thing is, that might actually be doable.
There are reasons to be skeptical of Greinke's NL-leading 1.52 ERA. It's a flimsy stat to begin with, and not all of his peripheral numbers pass the smell test.
Most notably, Greinke isn't striking many guys out. He's only striking out 7.4 batters per nine innings, quite the drop from the 9.2 K/9 rate he had last year.
On a related note, Greinke's velocity is down. At the start of play on Monday, FanGraphs had his average fastball clocked at 90.5 miles per hour, well below last year's average of 91.9. And given that he's 31 years old, that missing velocity may not be coming back.
As such, it's easy to point to Greinke's .220 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) as not only the key reason for his success, but also the source of his inevitable downfall. As Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports noted, conventional wisdom suggests that number is doomed to go up:
If Greinke does indeed start experiencing worse luck on batted balls, his ERA will pay the price. And if his ERA pays the price, he may not be able to seek his price in free agency.
But while it's easy to assume that Greinke will start getting hurt in the BABIP department, what this article presupposes is: Maybe he won't?
Yes, pitchers don't have a ton of control over what happens when the ball leaves the bat. But they can have some. The ability to manage contact is a skill that's getting more attention these days, in part because we finally have figures that properly highlight how good pitchers are at it.
For example, FanGraphs has Soft%, or a pitcher's percentage of soft-hit balls. Heading into Monday's action, here's what the top of the MLB leaderboard looked like:
At the start of the day, there was Greinke among the five best soft-contact merchants in the game. The average batted ball velocity data at Baseball Savant further supported this, as Greinke's average of 85.3 miles per hour off the bat was the fifth-lowest among qualified starters.
This would appear to be new territory for Greinke. His career Soft% is only 16.8, and his previous career best was only 22.0 back in 2011. If he stays on his current pace, he'll shatter that.
Given that and the whole small sample size thing, maybe you feel like screaming the F word (that's "fluke" in this case). But in reality, this actually looks like a case of Greinke getting smarter by...well, by dumbing things down.
In his first two seasons with the Dodgers, Greinke's repertoire of pitches was as varied as any in the game. Per Brooks Baseball, he threw five different pitches at least 10 percent of the time.
But this year? Greinke entered Monday throwing only three pitches at least 10 percent of the time: his four-seam fastball, slider and changeup. Split things up into batter handedness splits, and you can see where this difference is coming from:
Though Greinke has technically gone from being a five-pitch pitcher to a three-pitch pitcher, realistically he's more like a two-pitch pitcher. Right-handed batters are getting fastballs and sliders, and left-handed batters are getting fastballs and changeups.
Why go so simple? Seemingly because he has a similarly simple approach in mind for how he wants to execute these pitches.
In 2013 and 2014, Greinke's fastball/slider pattern against right-handed batters looked like this:
What you see there is a lot of pitches away. That pales in comparison, however, to what Greinke is doing with his fastball/slider pattern against right-handed batters in 2015:
Greinke was going away from right-handed batters with his fastballs and sliders in 2013 and 2014. Now he's going way away, to a point where he's not even faking an effort to keep them honest with pitches inside.
Not surprisingly, he's doing pretty much the same thing with his fastball/changeup combination against lefties. Here's 2013-2014:
And here's 2015:
Slightly different images, but the same story. What was already an away-heavy approach has become even more away-heavy.
Now, it's possible that Greinke isn't doing this intentionally. Maybe he wants to be more around the zone but just hasn't been able to execute. Maybe it's early-season rust or something.
But I doubt it. Greinke is very rarely not in command. And given that his practical mind is also a learned mind, this would appear to be a case of him chasing soft contact by going where the numbers say to go.
Generally speaking, right-handed batters and left-handed batters have a harder time hitting outside pitches for power than they do hitting inside pitches for power. And while batted ball velocity doesn't say that outside pitches are necessarily harder to hit with authority, the raw power numbers from Baseball Savant confirm that power production has been harder to come by on outside pitches than on inside pitches in 2015:
So you know all the soft contact Greinke is getting? That doesn't look like such a fluke after all. He's making an effort to stay as away from hitters as much as possible, and the numbers say that's where a pitcher should be going if he wants to avoid getting hurt.
So far, this approach has translated in a super-low BABIP and, in turn, a super-low ERA. And while Greinke's ERA more than likely isn't going to stay below 2.00 all season, it's a good bet that he'll be able to exit 2015 with his third straight sub-3.00 ERA.
And if he does, exercising that opt-out clause will be a no-brainer.
Yes, the winter's free-agent market is going to be saturated with talented starting pitching. But if Greinke does opt out, there's no question he'd be right there next to David Price, Johnny Cueto and Jordan Zimmermann among the best of the best. And if James Shields can get $75 million coming off a 3.21 ERA in his age-32 season, Greinke could surely do better coming off a 2.00-ish ERA in his age-31 season.
But this is a matter for later, of course. Greinke will cross that bridge when he gets to it. For now, he'll probably just keep staying away.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.
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