When did Zack Greinke get so awesome? I was thinking about this today. Zack Greinke had a great year last year, but it was nothing close to the way he has started this season. Which left me asking, at what point last year did he start to put it all together? When did the switch get hit? To the numbers....

(WARNING: What you are about to read is derived from extremely small sample sizes: ONE PLUS SEASON! I am not attempting to make conclusions, or predict future performance, but rather lay out the past 1+ year of Zack Greinke's career in an easy to follow manner.)

Okay. Let's start where Greinke restarted, as a starter: 2008. He pitched a couple games in 2007 toward the end of the season, but I'm going to disregard those as he was just getting his feet wet in the rotation again.

If you look at Greinke's 2008 season, from the start to May 28, he posted a 2.88 ERA. However, his peripherals weren't as strong as they could have been:

From April 3, 2008 to May 28, 2008

• 11 GS
• 75 IP
• 2.88 ERA
• 1.2 WHIP
• 71 hits (8.52 H/9)
• 19 BB (2.28 BB/9)
• 53 SO (6.36 K/9. 2.79/1 K/BB)
• 7 HR (.84 HR/9)
• 19% LD
• 1.04 GB

Certainly these are impressive numbers, but towards the middle of the season Greinke hit a bump. This rough stretch started with a four home run shellacking by the Chicago White Sox, and during it Greinke posted the worst 10 start stretch of his career since the season that forced him to take a year away from baseball to regain his sanity. The numbers:

From June 3rd, 2008 to July 23, 2008

• 10 GS
• 58 IP
• 5.59 ERA
• 1.54 WHIP
• 67 H (10.40 H/9)
• 22 BB (3.41 BB/9)
• 61 SO (9.47 K/9, 2.77/1 K/BB)
• 11 HR (1.71 HR/9)
• 19% LD
• 1.20 GB

Whoa. Damn. There are some really ugly numbers in there - outside of the K/9, those are bad. The HR/9 is especially, Jeff-Suppan-starting-every-game-in-Philly bad. Brett-Myers-losing-another-3MPH-of-velocity bad. So the question is, WTF happened? Basically, from my own non expert analysis, Greinke  got unlucky, and when you're putting a lot of guys on base, you can't really afford to get unlucky.

Giving up 11 homers in  58 innings is hard... unless your name is Kyle Farnsworth. Line drive percentage stayed the same, ground balls actually went up slightly (depending on who's GB/FB numbers you use - I used Fangraphs, BR disagrees). But, K's went up -  as did walks, and balls soaring out of the ballpark.

I don't have the pitch F/X data because I'm not smart enough to manipulate it, but I am curious to see if the pitch mix changed here or what. Either way: big time jump in strikeouts, big time jump in walks.Interesting. This is the point in the season where Zack turned into a bonafide power pitcher as a starter. A power pitcher that was putting too many guys on base, and serving up some serious bombs.

Obviously he wasn't going to give up that many HR's for the rest of the season, but more importantly, he had to refine his control. So, Zack did what he does best - bounce back. The rebound started July 28, 2008 and has continued to this day. Suddenly, Zack Greinke started pitching really well. Really, really well. Like, "suddenly I can throw all my pitches for strikes and nobody can hit them" well.

How did he do it? Well... it has been a combination of throwing with the command he showed in his first 11 starts, joined with the strikeout rate of his next 9. Which has given us his last 15:

From July 28 2008 - April 24 2009

• 15 GS
• 98.1 IP
• 1.65 ERA
• 1.06 WHIP
• 83 hits (7.6 H/9)
• 21 walks (1.93 BB/9)
• 105 K (9.64 K/9, 5/1 K/BB)
• 3 HR (.28 HR/9)
• 1.32 GB
• ~23% LD (not exactly sure, don't have time to calculate it exactly - if somebody wants to figure it out for me, that'd be sweet)

*So just for fun, what would those rate stats look like projected over the 34 starts Johan Santana got last year?

• 34 GS
• 222 IP / 187 H
• 238 K / 48 BB

Okay, here we go. Those are some serious numbers. Groundball rate continues to rise (yay!), strikeout rate stays consistent with what he cranked it up to in that poor stretch of games, but check out the walk numbers. Anytime you are posting >9 K/9 and <2 BB/9, you are entering Johan Santana territory. Another thing worth pointing out is that while he has not allowed many hits, it is not an unsustainable number. The very low WHIP is very much the product of a very low walk rate. The one part of this that screams out "LUCKY" is the home runs allowed, which obviously is not going to remain that low. However, even with regression to the mean in the % of flyballs leaving the yard, these are excellent numbers.

Yes, the sample size is small. Yes, we're only 4 games into the season. Still, I think this is a fairly interesting look into the continued evolution of Zack Greinke. If you need a reason to feel happy about the future of the Royals, in the wake of Gordon and Soria being injured, Kyle Davies getting pummeled back to early 2008, Sydney Ponson starting today, Horacio Ramirez and Tony Pena Jr both occupying spots on the 25-man... Just look at those last 98 IP. 

Oh man.

"That's hot." - Paris Hilton