Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Zack Greinke
All the rosy pre-season forecasts for Greinke talked about his preternatural maturity. But a look at his game by game stats shows a pitcher losing his edge, falling apart really, perhaps because no matter what he did early in the season he didn’t win.
There is a reason that we talk about a pitcher’s confidence. It is an integral part of his ability to do what’s right, even though it doesn’t always work out. If you know you’re doing well bad things can happen and you simply shrug. But when bad things happen over and over you lose that insulation, you press, or you recoil, and trouble seeks you out.
The Royals should be doing everything they can to protect Greinke now. Maybe letting him take his lumps makes sense, but I kind of doubt it. He’s got to get back to that place he was early in the year, when he was pitching like everything was okay (because he didn’t yet know how badly his team stunk).
agreed – I think a brief stint in the minors could help him get his feet back on the ground. then again, he could find it insulting to see all sorts of worse pitchers in the majors in the royals’ rotation…