Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. This week: Zack Greinke.
Who he is: For anyone who studies ballpark factors, it might have been apparent that Zack Greinke made a mistake when he signed a $206.5 million free agent deal with the Diamondbacks.
From 2013 to 2015, Greinke enjoyed the greatest stretch of his career, going 51-15 with a 2.30 ERA for the Dodgers. He particularly dominated at home, going 28-5 with a 2.01 ERA, while racking up a 23-10 record with a 2.61 ERA on the road.
Researchers like Bill James have noted that when Sandy Koufax morphed from a lefty with control problems into the finest ace of the mid-1960s, it was partly due to Dodger Stadium, which boasted a towering mound and coastal air.
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The traditional narrative goes that Koufax found success after catcher Norm Sherry convinced him to throw less hard in spring training in 1961. Surely that helped Koufax, as did baseball widening the strike zone in January 1963. But Dodger Stadium served Koufax and many other pitchers supremely well, with Koufax going 57-15 with a 1.37 ERA at home from 1962 to 1966, while going 54-19 with a 2.57 ERA elsewhere.
Perhaps Greinke could have been his generation’s Sandy Koufax. But in assessing free agent deals, it’s doubtful many ballplayers think about which ballparks will best serve their legacies. Mostly, they just chase the money. It’s why hulking sluggers like Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Mo Vaughn wind up toiling in Anaheim, and why every few years, Coors Field swallows another Mike Hampton or Denny Neagle.
So Greinke predictably took a massive offer from Arizona. And a few games in, it’s going poorly. Small sample sizes of statistics are inherently risky to evaluate. But it’s already clear that by signing with the Diamondbacks, Greinke might have cost himself the Hall of Fame.
Cooperstown chances: 25 percent
Why: Greinke turned 32 in October, completing the 2015 season with 142 wins for his career. According to Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index tool, just eight Hall of Fame pitchers have had fewer wins through their age-32 seasons: Jim Bunning, Red Faber, Jesse Haines, Randy Johnson, Bob Lemon, Joe McGinnity, Gaylord Perry and Dazzy Vance.
Sure, Greinke could be the new Randy Johnson, who had 95 wins on his 32nd birthday in 1995, signed a massive free agent deal of his own with the Diamondbacks in December 1998, and promptly won four consecutive National League Cy Young Awards. He did this leaving an even better pitchers’ park than Dodger Stadium, the Astrodome.
There seems to be a certain, exceedingly rare kind of pitcher who can thrive in most any park. Generally, it’s a strikeout pitcher like Johnson, who even fared alright at Coors Field, going 7-5 with a 4.01 ERA and 96 strikeouts in 85.1 innings in Denver lifetime.
But Greinke’s not been that pitcher. More times than not, he’s benefited from good pitchers’ parks, from Los Angeles to Anaheim to Kansas City, while faring mediocrely elsewhere. He needs a team for which he can win 15 games a season for the next few years and a home ballpark where spacious confines or coastal air can help him get his lifetime ERA closer to 3.00.
The Diamondbacks haven’t been this team for the most part in recent years. And Chase Field, which the Diamondbacks have been trying to get Phoenix to replace, decidedly is not a pitchers’ park. Baseball-Reference.com, which scores park factors at 100, with under 100 favoring pitchers and over 100 favoring batters, rated Chase Field at 104 for pitchers last year.
Arizona went 79-83 in 2015, 64-98 the year before that, 81-81 the two seasons before. There’s always the chance the Diamondbacks can be a contender once more-- the team that won 94 games in 2011, 90 in 2007, or an average of 91 from 1999 to 2002. Greinke could be part of the free agent push that’s been key to this franchise’s success at various times in its history. Or he could be cannon fodder, a salve for deeper issues.
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The unfair thing is that Greinke will likely bear the brunt if things continue to go wrong in Arizona, since $200 million contracts invite a lot of scrutiny. Some critics will make digs at Greinke’s mental toughness, will perhaps bring up the anxiety disorder that hampered the early part of his career. Many baseball critics are just as ignorant of park factors as players can be.
Granted, sabermetrics can adjust for the factors or losing teams and might be forgiving for a player like Greinke, who has 48.3 Wins Above Replacement as of this writing and could be on-track to fall into Hall of Fame range for the stat for his career, somewhere between 70 and 80 WAR.
In fact, baseball researcher Adam Darowski already has Greinke with a 100 Hall Rating and “already Hall-worthy.” Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated already ranks Greinke as the 87th-best pitcher in baseball history by JAWS, though he doesn’t yet rate him as an average Hall of Famer for it. That could come if Greinke is able to pitch effectively another five or six seasons.
Of course, sabermetrics are a tough case for Cooperstown with many Hall of Fame voters still loathe to buy into advanced stats. Greinke could wind up with a sabermetrically-worthy, though less traditionally impressive case due to his ballpark and have no more of a shot at a plaque than Rick Reuschel, Dave Stieb, or Billy Pierce, among others.
Most likely, Greinke has two options for making the Hall of Fame. He can rebound from the rough beginning to his season, defy expectations, and make the most of $200 million. Or he can co-opt a strategy from hit 1989 film “Major League” and play badly enough to get shipped out of town.
That didn’t work for Rachel Phelps, and it isn’t advisable for Greinke.
Cooperstown Chances examines the Baseball Hall of Fame case of one candidate each week. Series author and Sporting News contributor Graham Womack writes regularly about the Hall of Fame and other topics related to baseball history at his website, Baseball: Past and Present. Follow him on Twitter: @grahamdude.