Thinking Ahead With Zack Greinke
You don’t have to wake up yet, but are you thinking seriously about it?
--Adam Sandler in Spanglish
With the Royals displaying an unparalleled lack of activity, I’ve found it extremely challenging to find interesting bits of Royals-related news to write about this week. That’s why I wrote two articles detailing two aspects of the Carlos Beltran signing and a short piece on the stir Randy Moss has created. With that said, one of the biggest challenges of keeping a blog up-to-date is being able to take an interesting person, place, event, etc. and putting one’s own spin on it. And when it comes to the Royals, no person’s more interesting than Zack Greinke.
As foreshadowed above in that line from Spanglish, the Royals aren’t in a position where they have to get Zack’s name on a contract, but they at least need to be seriously considering it. I wasn’t able to find a list of the pitchers who’ve signed guaranteed contracts right after their rookie seasons (if there have been any at all), but my guess is that there’d be very little precedence for such a move. For one, young pitchers carry far too much of an injury risk and most don’t reach their highest potential. However, Greinke doesn’t fall into the category of "most pitchers" as any Kansas Citian will tell you. His risk of an arm injury is significantly lower than the norm because of his superb mechanics and, like Livan Hernandez, not using 100 percent effort on every pitch. Both aspects of his game put less strain on his arm. I don’t think there are many concerns about his long-term prospects either, especially after he more than held his own in 145 big league innings as a 20-year-old.
Even if Zack or his representatives would listen to an offer of guaranteed money, I wouldn’t expect them to accept any offer that would buy out years of his free agency. The Royals don’t need to worry about that right now anyway, because they control his rights until the end of the 2010 season. Avoiding the arbitration process, however, is pretty darned important to a small-market baseball team too. Doing so creates cost certainty, even if the cost is slightly higher than what the team might pay in arbitration. Greinke’s well on his way towards becoming a star pitcher, so before his situation reaches the point that Beltran's did, I'd like to see the Royals show some confidence in the guy they're clearly building around. He's going to be very special and perhaps unlike anything baseball has seen before, so keeping him in Kansas City for as long as possible needs to be high on Allard Baird's to-do list.
--Adam Sandler in Spanglish
With the Royals displaying an unparalleled lack of activity, I’ve found it extremely challenging to find interesting bits of Royals-related news to write about this week. That’s why I wrote two articles detailing two aspects of the Carlos Beltran signing and a short piece on the stir Randy Moss has created. With that said, one of the biggest challenges of keeping a blog up-to-date is being able to take an interesting person, place, event, etc. and putting one’s own spin on it. And when it comes to the Royals, no person’s more interesting than Zack Greinke.
As foreshadowed above in that line from Spanglish, the Royals aren’t in a position where they have to get Zack’s name on a contract, but they at least need to be seriously considering it. I wasn’t able to find a list of the pitchers who’ve signed guaranteed contracts right after their rookie seasons (if there have been any at all), but my guess is that there’d be very little precedence for such a move. For one, young pitchers carry far too much of an injury risk and most don’t reach their highest potential. However, Greinke doesn’t fall into the category of "most pitchers" as any Kansas Citian will tell you. His risk of an arm injury is significantly lower than the norm because of his superb mechanics and, like Livan Hernandez, not using 100 percent effort on every pitch. Both aspects of his game put less strain on his arm. I don’t think there are many concerns about his long-term prospects either, especially after he more than held his own in 145 big league innings as a 20-year-old.
Even if Zack or his representatives would listen to an offer of guaranteed money, I wouldn’t expect them to accept any offer that would buy out years of his free agency. The Royals don’t need to worry about that right now anyway, because they control his rights until the end of the 2010 season. Avoiding the arbitration process, however, is pretty darned important to a small-market baseball team too. Doing so creates cost certainty, even if the cost is slightly higher than what the team might pay in arbitration. Greinke’s well on his way towards becoming a star pitcher, so before his situation reaches the point that Beltran's did, I'd like to see the Royals show some confidence in the guy they're clearly building around. He's going to be very special and perhaps unlike anything baseball has seen before, so keeping him in Kansas City for as long as possible needs to be high on Allard Baird's to-do list.