At the current pace, it may not be long before Zack Greinke ’s age is higher than the average velocity of his fastball! He’s more or less lost his fastball, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a productive fantasy pitcher, let alone an ace in reality. His fastball clocked in, on average just 90 miles per hour, and 46.5 percent usage rate of his fastball last season was the lowest of his career. Fortunately, with a never-ending arsenal of what feels like 38 different pitches, he managed to go 18-5 with a 2.93 ERA across 208.2 innings in the regular season. He wasn’t as good in the postseason for the Astros, posting a 4.68 ERA in five starts, but us fantasy owners care only about the regular season and Greinke was damn good in that realm.

Quick thoughts from the chart above are as follows:

  • Fastball usage is way, way down, and will continue to do so
  • Changeup usage is way up, as is his curveball
  • Where’s his slider going?

Opponents rocked his changeup a bit more than recent seasons, but it still resulted in a ground ball rate over 62 percent and his 12.6 percent fly ball rate on this pitch is in line with his career mark, and second lowest mark in the past four seasons.

What about his curveball? Well, the increased usage was quite beneficial for Greinke, considering that his O-Swing rate on this pitch was his second-highest mark of his career, and his 17.0 percent swinging strike rate tied his previous career best (2007).

Onto is slider, where has it gone? It’s decreased every year since 2014. Why? Well, for starters, opponents tend to drive this pitch, and the HR/FB rate against this pitch has been at least 16 percent in six of the last eight seasons. Additionally, the line drive rate is increasing against his slider, opponents aren’t chasing it, they aren’t whiffing, and the contact rate is through the roof.

Year

LD%

O-Swing%

Contact%

SwSr%

pVAL

2015

26.7%

46.5%

63.1%

21.0%

18.3

2016

20.8%

47.5%

62.8%

20.8%

5.1

2017

25.8%

51.4%

56.4%

25.5%

7.5

2018

27.3%

44.2%

68.8%

17.3%

-0.2

2019

29.2%

37.9%

75.7%

12.0%

-2.2

Courtesy of FanGraphs

Greinke can continue to adapt his arsenal to make it work for him, led by three plus non-fastball offerings. He relies on junk, but he makes it work. Doing so allows him to minimize hard contact against him. His average exit velocity of 86.8 miles per hour ranked in the 79th percentile last season, and is right on par with where he’s been in recent seasons. The same goes for his barrel rate, which came in at 6.3 percent in 2019. Furthermore, on just fly balls and line drives, he did a great job of minimizing hard contact on these batted balls. For a frame of reference, out of 242 qualified pitchers last year, Greinke’s average exit velocity on just FB/LD came in at 196th, right on par with New York’s ace Jacob deGrom .

Greinke is far from prolific in the strikeout department, but he’s only one year removed from hovering right around a 9.00 K/9. While he’ll likely remain around 22 percent or so in 2020, fantasy owners know exactly what they have when drafting Greinke. He’s not going to be a major source of strikeouts, and it’s not like that will be some sort of unsurprising revelation during the 2020 season. He’s posted a 9.00 K/9 just two times in the last eight seasons.

Strikeouts aside, Greinke is durable and has numerous years of ace-worthy production under his belt. He doesn’t need to be a big strikeout guy to be successful or valuable to your fantasy team. Just replicating what he did last year is more than enough. He is currently the 19th starter off the board, and he allows you to wait a round or two from the top arms, and essentially get a discount ace. He limits hard contact, and if you’re only knocking him for his age, you’re going to miss out on solid value.

The Houston offense may take a step back, but they are still plenty above average and will provide Greinke with enough run support to win plenty of games here in 2020. If you don’t want a guy who will give you an ERA right around 3.00 with a 22 percent strikeout rate pitching for one of the best offenses in baseball outside of the top 15 starters, then you’re doing everyone else in your league a favor, and letting great value drop right into their lap.

Statistical Credits:
fangraphs.com
baseballsavant.mlb.com
nfc.shgn.com/adp/baseball