Zach Greinke returns to its roots. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the right-handed free agent has agreed to a one-year contract with the Royals until his physical is completed.via twitter). Greinke, a client of Excel Sports Management, will be guaranteed $13 million and could earn another $2 million through innings-based promotions. tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.
Greinke, 38, is no longer the fiery ace he was by the end of his first run with the Royals, but he remains an effective pitch-eater. He will return to his former court as a senior statesman who believes this is a very young staff who will no doubt want to learn as much pitching knowledge as possible from the 18-year major league veteran.
Greinke has spent the past two-plus seasons with the Astros after being traded from Arizona to Houston in an incredible deal at the 2019 trade deadline. His strikeout rate and fastball speed have dropped in 2021, but he has retained pristine strike zone control that has stood him in good stead. Since 2020, Greinke has a 4.12 ERA in 238 innings for Houston, although his 2021 season would have looked significantly better had it not been for the collapse at the end of September.
In his first 26 starts in 2021, Greinke posted a strong 3.41 ERA. Fielding’s unaffected numbers were still slightly below him due to his lack of punting shots (17.5% over that stretch), but Greinke posted a measly 87.7 mph exit average during this time and had a 33% percentage hitting opponents is better than the 35.4% he finished the season with. Greinke tested positive for Covid-19 at the end of August and returned to IL at the end of September due to neck pain. It is not clear if this had a direct impact on his results, although it is possible that he did not give 100% throughout the game. The results seem to speak for it, as Greinke was tattooed for 21 runs in his last 15 1/3 innings of the job.
Not all.