If you can figure out who exactly Shane Greene is supposed to be, you ought to charge $50 an hour to read people’s minds and tell them the future.
Never has there been a more Jekyll-and-Hyde performance to start a baseball season.
The 26-year-old righty started the year like a modern day version of Greg Maddux: a total of 23 innings pitched, one earned run allowed.
If the person that inscribes names on to the Cy Young trophy wanted to get an early start and begin carving out the “S-H-A,” nobody would have blinked an eye.
But of late, the Greene Machine has done a full 180-degree turn.
It began with a rocky, although not necessarily horrible, outing at Oakland. The Tigers got shut out anyway, so the 4-0 result was hardly on Greene’s shoulders.
His next start came in Anaheim and home run balls were being served up like free bread at an Italian restaurant. How’s this for a stat line? Five outs recorded, five home runs allowed.
Rotation Spot Not Guaranteed
Numbers like that would make it hard to keep your rotation spot on a slow-pitch softball team, let alone in the big leagues.
He got the A’s again a week ago today and it was more of the same. Very few swings and misses and a whole heck of a lot of hard hit balls. He’d last just 4.1 innings while surrendering six runs in another Tigers loss, the third straight with Shane on the bump.
And then there was yesterday. The Cubs had been silenced masterfully the night prior by Anibal Sanchez. The National League lineup looked uncomfortable having to support a DH.
Heck, last night the Cubs used little-known Mike Baxter as their designated hitter; he entered play with a not-so-robust .154 batting average.
But again, Greene got walloped all around the park. It was another short stay, just three innings, but time enough to allow seven hits and five runs, three of which came on a monster blast to right-center by Chris Coghlan.
How to Explain Great Start?
With balls flying out of the park during Greene’s starts, it begs the question of whether his smoking hot start was in large part due to the frigid temperatures that accompany the beginning of the baseball season. When it is 30 or 40 degrees out, hitters want to get up and get back to the heated dugout. To his credit, Greene took advantage of these conditions and put up brilliant numbers.
But now the sun has come out and at least of late, the arsenal of Shane Greene has been exposed in a major way.
With Justin Verlander set to return this weekend and Sanchez seemingly back on course after his excellent performance on Tuesday, it'd be the perfect time to drive Greene down to Toledo for a couple of weeks and try to determine what exactly is the problem.
The Tigers are going to be clawing for one of the five American League playoff spots all summer long. It does not appear they will coast to a post season berth like they might have in season’s past.
This year, each game carries with it some level of significance, making each Greene blow-up that much more destructive in the standings.
It’s not to say that he can’t recover and even return to something resembling that early-season form. After all, he did pitch reasonably well as a rookie for Yankees last year, albeit in just 15 games and a little under 80 innings.
It looks as if Greene is deep in the dog days of summer, but that really shouldn’t be the case until about the middle of August. Brad Ausmus admitted last night that Greene is struggling, but wouldn’t go so far as to say a demotion is coming.
With the club’s best interests in mind, and Greene’s too for that matter, a change should be made in the next couple of days. To let him take the mound and try to cobble together another three or four inning start would be irresponsible when he so clearly needs a little time to take a breath and possibly tinker a bit with mechanics.
The next outing for Greene is scheduled to take place against Cincinnati, the second most prolific home run-hitting team in the National League. I’ve never seen anyone hit the ball up into the statues at Comerica Park, but with Greene vs. Reds on the horizon, I wouldn’t rule out a Joey Votto blast getting caught up in Ty Cobb’s spikes.
For everybody’s sake, let’s hope that matchup never sees the light of day.
