What we're witnessing is the baseball equivalent of Thomas Jefferson penning the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Walt Whitman delivering Leaves of Grass to the Rome brothers in 1855 or Jennifer Love Hewitt walking onto the set of I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997.
Zack Greinke. Zack Greinke in 2009.
Most justified 6-0 ever.
Zack Greinke. Maybe you saw it coming, maybe you didn't. Maybe you believed there were signs, maybe you thought he'd already peaked. Whatever the case may be, we're at a new, nearly indescribable level (non-Posnanski's of the world) right now.
Pitcher wins are probably the dumbest stat there is, which is saying something in the world of the save and 99% of the tidbits produced by the Elias Sports Bureau that you hear every time you watch a game. Still, has anybody ever deserved to be 6-0 more than Zack Greinke has right now?
First start: 6 IP, 3 BBs, 7 Ks, 3 Hs, 0 Run
Second start: 5 IP, 2 BBs, 9 Ks, 6 Hs, 0 Runs
Third start: 9 IP, 0 BBs, 10 Ks, 7 Hs, 0 Runs
Fourth start: 9 IP, 1 BBs, 10 Ks, 3 Hs, 1 Run
Fifth start: 7 IP, 2 BBs, 8 Ks, 5 Hs, 2 Runs
Sixth start: 9 IP, 0 BBs, 10 Ks, 6 Hs, 0 Runs
On the year Greinke has walked eight and struck out fifty four.
Over the last two years we've all reveled in how awesome it is to have Soria around and how dominant he can be. Right now, what Greinke is doing is completely insane: he's like a shutdown closer, but he's doing it over the entire game.
Headed into the game, his ERA+ was 941. 9-4-1. That number is going to go up tonight. Fangraphs and BP are crashing trying to generate advanced stats on this guy.
What he are watching right now goes beyond the Royals having an all-star, beyond the Royals now having the Cy Young favorite, beyond the magazine covers (have you heard?) even beyond the glory of Karl Ravech's praise. This is borderline historical right now. Honestly, when I think about it, a Cy Young award doesn't capture this kind of dominance well enough.
What Greinke's doing right now is like walking around 1980s Mexico with a hundred dollar bill in his pocket: he can't even buy anything because if anyone gave him change, he'd liquidate the country's assets, so its easier for him to just be given whatever he wants.