A nice bit about Zack’s scoreless inning streak from The Hardball Times. It shows just how important having strike out pitchers is. Greinke has given up some hard-hit balls, but his ability to miss bats means those base runners don’t end up getting very far.
We’ll see if he can keep the streak alive tonight against the Tigers.
When looking at line drive rate, Greinke trails only Cliff Lee (35 percent) in the American League. Hitters are getting good wood on the ball, and as we would expect, most of those line drives appear to be falling for hits. So how has Greinke been so successful?
First, he’s not allowing too many balls to be put into play to begin with. For the year, he’s faced 80 batters and with 26 strikeouts, five walks and one hit batter, just 60 percent of all hitters have made the defense work behind him.
Then, once hitters reach base, Greinke is really bearing down. In 38 plate appearances with runners on, Greinke has allowed only four hits—a .111 batting average. Five times, runners have been on third base with fewer than two outs. In those rare occasions, with his opponents needing only a fly ball to plate a run, Greinke has been dominant, striking out four of the five hitters and inducing a weak ground ball to third from the other.
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