Zack Greinke

It seems like a long time since Zack Greinke was a hot prospect who pitched well in his first season in the majors, which makes it surprising that he just turned 23 a few months ago. It remains to be seen whether KC will trust him with a rotation spot this year, but they certainly should considering some of the pitchers they've thrown out there the past few years. I'm leaving out a short stint in the minors in 2004 and in the majors in 2006...neither was long enough to matter.

Year Team League IP BB K
2004 KC AL 145 26 100
2005 KC AL 183 53 114
2006 Wichita AA 105.2 27 94

Overall that looks like a pretty consistent, decent control pitcher. Even his 'horrible' 2005 doesn't look so awful when you ignore his ERA. He's never going to be a star, but he's worth picking up in deeper leagues, and in Yahoo standard leagues he's worth spot-starting against bad teams. Of course my real hope is that KC management still thinks he's got a bad attitude (or whatever it was they said about him) and trades him to an NL team where I'd consider him a major sleeper.