It’s time to end the tired narrative that Zack Greinke wouldn’t be able to handle Boston
Zack Greinke on the mound during the 2015 National League Division Series
COMMENTARY
Phase One of Dave Dombrowski’s crucial offseason mission — heretofore titled Operation Repair This Lousy Pitching Staff (you have no idea how much I tried to make that fit a PORCELLO acronym) — was completed with an unexpected move Friday night.
The Red Sox president of baseball operations pulled off his first major deal since coming aboard in August, swapping a four-pack of prospects to the San Diego Padres for four-time All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel.
As previously discussed in this space, it’s a risky trade, and a wholly justifiable one too. Kimbrel is an exceptional closer (career K/9 rate: 14.5) who is entering his age-28 season. Yes, I do believe he is an upgrade on Jean Machi, now that you mention it.
So long as Dombrowski, who in previous stops was more than willing to use his farm system to barter for veterans, doesn’t swap the best remaining prospects from the Red Sox’ rich collection — that means Rafael Devers, Yoan Moncada, Anderson Espinoza and Andrew Benintendi — then this deal is a worthwhile one, presuming it works out as expected.
Of course, Dombrowski still must execute the most important part of Operation Repair This Lousy Pitching Staff (dang it, a BUCHHOLZ acronym flopped too): Finding a starting pitcher to front the rotation. You may know this type of pitcher from Red Sox seasons of relatively recent vintage as an ace. It’s time to find the next Josh Beckett, the next Curt Schilling, the next Jon Lester, someone who can front a rotation all the way through October. (There is, of course, no next Pedro.)
Kimbrel is sensational, or has been, but he also has never pitched more than 77 innings in a season, and he achieved that in 2011. The ace should anchor the rest of the staff by delivering three times as many high-quality innings as Kimbrel can be expected to pitch. He will also allow the remaining pitchers in what right now is an adequate-at-best rotation to slot into their appropriate spots. I can live with Porcello as the fourth starter.
Dombrowski, who traded Porcello to the Red Sox last year for Yoenis Cespedes while both were in Detroit, isn’t about to make the same mistake predecessor Ben Cherington did. He’s not going to pretend he’s an ace. He’s going to find a pitcher who actually is one.
Fortunately, there are a few intriguing options available in the free-agent class, and Dombrowski has indicated that he will follow that route to acquire one. The logical target is David Price, the accomplished 30-year-old lefty late of Toronto, whose repertoire and intelligence should allow him to age with relative grace into his mid-30s.
Price has added appeal because he will not cost the 12th pick in the draft as compensation. But he will have plenty of suitors waving plump nine-figure contracts in his direction, and given that he hasn’t always had a copacetic relationship with the Red Sox, it’s Dombrowski’s obligation to have a Plan B in place — and various other plans that take him much deeper into the alphabet, frankly.
If Price doesn’t come here, I hope Plan B is to pursue Zack Greinke. And let’s get this out of the way right now: If you’re going to suggest the 32-year-old right-hander who just submitted a Madduxian 19-win, 3-loss, 1.66 ERA season for the Dodgers can’t handle Boston, I’d suggest you abandon that weak narrative now before you make a fool of yourself and do some homework on who Greinke is and where he’s coming from.
Let’s start with this: The only people who waste words talking about the toughness of the Boston media are the Boston media. Sure, there’s nonsense in four-hour blocks on the radio at various times daily, but the calculated shrieking is easy enough to ignore. There are so many wonderful podcast options these days!
Maybe our media contingent has more contrarians and trolls per capita than, say, Kansas City and Milwaukee, but they too are ignored easily enough, and many of them become tame, even captivated, when an excellent player also happens to have a distinctive personality and a fascinating personal back story.
That certainly describes Greinke, who might be the most interesting man in baseball. He loves the sport so much that he sometimes scouts college players on his downtime. When the Dodgers met with him in November 2012 during his last free-agent foray, he told them offhandedly he loved the player they had chosen with the 18th overall pick that April. Sure looks like he was right about Corey Seager.
He is notoriously blunt, but his candor is delivered with a guilelessness that can make it hard for those on the receiving end of some harsh assessments to take offense. Wrote Molly Knight in The Best Team Money Can Buy, her superb book about the recent Dodgers: “If two teams offered him the same amount of money, he would choose the one with the more competent front office—which he didn’t mind saying out loud to the members of those front offices.’’
The great current sports writer Joe Posnanski is sort of the official Greinke scrivener, having covered his career beginning to end with the Royals, and he writes of him frequently and admiringly but also with an acknowledgment of bewildered mystery.
“I have written about Zack Greinke many times, for many years, and there’s one thing I can say without even the slightest doubt,’’ Posnanski wrote in December 2010: “I have no idea what’s going on in his head.’’
That is not a bad thing. It’s part of the appeal, especially if you have more than a clue about what Greinke been through. The reason Grienke is shadowed by the suggestion that he can’t handle certain markets comes from a choice, seemingly cataclysmic to the Royals at the time, that he made in early 2006, as he was preparing to bounce back from an intensely frustrating season in which he went 5-17 with a 5.80 ERA for a 56-106 Royals team.
He decided, suddenly, to walk away from baseball. Posnanski remembered how it went down in this 2014 piece:
On a Saturday in February … Greinke did not show up to throw batting practice, though he was on the schedule. He had to be talked into participating in the team’s photo day. He was strange and distant. And then he was gone. He met with [manager Buddy] Bell and [general manager Allard] Baird and told them he had to get away. He admitted that he had been miserable for more than two years, and then he found himself pitching to John Buck in a regular session, only he was throwing every pitch as hard as he could, like a madman, he could not stop himself, he could not control his anger. He had to leave.
“That was one of the most emotional conversations I’ve ever had with anyone,’’ Baird says. “It had nothing at all to do with baseball. I just saw a young man in a lot of pain.’’
Greinke left the Royals, and when he got back home he told his girlfriend and his family that he was done with baseball. He could not do it anymore. Then he talked to a doctor, who suggested his problem was chemical. He was diagnosed with social anxiety, a disorder that creates discomfort and apprehension when the person is placed in social settings or when being judged by others. He also was diagnosed with clinical depression. He wondered if he could play baseball with that kind of pain. But as soon as he began taking medication — anti-depressants — he found himself feeling a little better.
Here’s Knight on the same powerful topic:
He devoured self-help books with little results. Depression had run in his family, but he didn’t think that was what was wrong with him. He had never thought of taking his own life, not even once. But then he saw a doctor who put a name on the cause of his suffering. Social anxiety disorder. The label didn’t matter much, except that a diagnosis of a genuine illness meant that perhaps there was a medicine out there that could fix it. By the time that doctor handed him a piece of paper with the word “Zoloft’’ scribbled on it, Grienke was ready to try anything. Two months later he picked up a baseball again, only this time the noise that pushed him out of the game was just a whisper. He could deal with whispers. And far from feeling embarrassed that he needed an anti-depressant, his only regret was that he hadn’t gone on the drug sooner. Three years after his diagnosis, he won the American League Cy Young Award.
Greinke has not “outgrown’’ anxiety, as one of my colleagues recently suggested to my dismay in print. He learned what it was that had afflicted him since he was a child, treated it, and has thrived ever since. This is not a man who cannot handle a market. That’s such a lame, self-aggrandizing suggestion. What Greinke has gone through has nothing to do with baseball, or his desire to pitch in big moments and big markets. “Greinke craves pressure,’’ wrote Posnanski in that aforementioned 2010 article, “I have seen it. I have listened to him talk about it. He craves big games.’’
Knight offered further confirmation in her book:
After Grienke signed with the Dodgers, baseball experts questioned whether he would wilt under the lights of the bright lights of a big city. Those who knew him and were well acquainted with his fierce competitiveness chuckled at the predictions of armchair psychologists and their weak grasp of the nuances of anxiety. His past afflictions had nothing to do with sold-out stadiums.
Greinke’s anxiety-imposed hiatus from baseball will have occurred 10 years ago next spring. He emerged as one of the best pitchers in baseball years ago, and not only has he maintained his success, he seems to be adding new layers of mastery. Over the past three seasons, he is 51-15 with a 2.30 ERA and a 156 adjusted ERA. The already brilliant has grown brighter and gotten better.
Yes, of course, the Red Sox should covet him, at worst as a secondary priority to Price. They have no one like him, in any meaningful way. And I’ll bet you they are doing much more than just due diligence. Allard Baird, in Kansas City as general manager a decade ago as an unsettled Greinke faced his career crossroads, now works in the Red Sox front office, as does Greinke’s good friend and former teammate Brian Bannister.
You get the sense that this front office, headed by Dombrowski, would meet Greinke’s criteria to be judged competent.
I’m not sure he’d find the media around here quite so proficient at their jobs, and he’d probably share his appraisal with that distinctive bluntness and unintentional charm.
I’d love to find out. There is no next Pedro. But Greinke is the most entertaining great pitcher I’ve seen since his heyday.
You still think Greinke can’t handle Boston? C’mon now. Smarten up. You know the story. You know the nuanced truth.
He’s an ace on the mound — and a man who long ago aced challenges so much more difficult than anything media nitwits and bleacher-dwelling know-it-alls could throw his way. Greinke has handled stuff so much more important than us, and he’s thrived. The least we can do in appreciation is to let such a tired, misguided narrative die.
Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn.
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