Baseball Press Ignores Zack Greinke's Greatness

Over his past six starts, Kansas City Royals ace and American League All-Star Zack Greinke has gone 0-6.

CBSSports.com, the former Sportsline.com and one of the Internet’s top sports websites according to Wikipedia, has marked Greinke’s player profile with a blue flag, meaning: “We consider this player to be cold.”

MLB.com, the official site of the Bud Selig media machine, has also joined in on the party, noting that Greinke “slogged through five starts in July without a single victory.”

It’s crazy that, in the current information age—when sophisticated and effective baseball statistics are free and easily accessible—people still use win-loss decisions in order to evaluate a pitcher’s performance.

Over the course of his 0-6 run, dating back to his last winning decision on June 16 in Pittsburgh, Greinke has thrown 37 innings, allowing 14 earned runs and striking out 48 while yielding 13 walks for a K/9 rate of 11.7, a K/BB of 3.69, and an ERA of 3.40.

Let’s compare those numbers to a recent Cy Young season such as Bartolo Colon’s 2005 campaign:

                                        K:9    K:BB    ERA
Grienke’s Past 6 Starts      11.7   3.69    3.40
Colon in ‘05                       6.3    3.65    3.48

Those same writers who have deemed Zack Greinke as “cold” and “slogging” over his past six starts deemed "Bartolo the Clown" the best pitcher in the American League in 2005. However, Colon's 2005 performance is, at best, slightly worse than Grienke’s performance during his losing streak.

What is the difference?

Colon won 21 of his 28 decisions that season. Does it make any sense that, because he plays on a piece of shit team, a negative connotation should be applied to Greinke’s stellar performance? 

It is embarrassing that baseball writers refuse to use the data that's at their disposal. This piece took me all of 20 minutes to write and research, and I wasn’t even paid for it.

Baseball is important to many people in this country and abroad; it would be nice if baseball writers took a little responsibility and reported on what is actually happening on the field.