How did Atlanta Braves reliever Shane Greene become the villain?

Back to Greene

The real question for the Braves is this: who do they think they’ll get for $6.5 million?

• The 1.18 ERA lights-out guy that he was for Detroit?
• The 4.01 ERA guy who was shaky when closing for Atlanta?
• The 3.38 ERA guy who gave up 4 hits over 2.2 playoff innings and faced 13 batters with a 1.875 WHIP?

Even if the answer is ‘something in between’, that’s not half bad.

But before you or Tim Tucker opt to put Greene out with the trash, allow me to quote from parts of his ‘At-A-Glance’ page at brooksbaseball.net (with emphasis added):

"His cutter has extreme cut action, generates more whiffs/swing compared to other pitchers’ cutters, results in more flyballs compared to other pitchers’ cutters and has some natural sink. His slider comes in below hitting speed, sweeps across the zone and results in more flyballs compared to other pitchers’ sliders. His fourseam fastball generates an extremely high number of swings & misses compared to other pitchers’ fourseamers, is an extreme flyball pitch compared to other pitchers’ fourseamers, has some natural sinking action and has slightly above average velo. His change (take this with a grain of salt because he’s only thrown 5 of them in 2019) generates an extremely high number of swings & misses compared to other pitchers’ changeups, dives down out of the zone, results in more flyballs compared to other pitchers’ changeups, is slightly firmer than usual and has slight armside fade."

Aside from wondering if he might want to try that changeup and 4-seamer more often, Greene does rely on his Sinker, Cutter, and Slider most often.

The sinker is a groundball-inducing pitch – not extremely so in his case – but that still generally works for Atlanta, given their defense. The combination of those pitches is a surprisingly rich mix for a reliever, and thus he’s clearly got the ‘stuff’… he just needs to re-harness it.

Yes – with fly balls and a juiced baseball, Greene will give up the occasional homer.  In fact, that was the source of most of the runs he yielded in 2019 before coming to Atlanta.  Otherwise, teams were having a tough time putting rallies together.

Decision Deferral

But in deciding what to do with him… in truth, Atlanta doesn’t nearly have to answer the question yet. Here’s why…

There are multiple milestones still to come between now and the regular season:

1. The Non-tender deadline. That’s December 2nd. Nothing need be decided before then.
2. Arbitration filings and decisions. There’s a reasonable chance that the Braves could carve a notch out of that $6.5 million estimated contract for 2020… maybe $6.0 million? Not a lot, but it’s plausible.
3. Even getting that far, arbitration contracts are not guaranteed and money hasn’t been spent yet. The Braves will have the opportunity to watch Greene during Spring outings (and backfield work) to determine whether he’s back into expected form.
   • He could be either traded or released at any point up until Opening Day and at worst, Atlanta would ‘only’ owe him designated fractions of that contract’s value.

So let’s watch the off-season progress:  

• Does Atlanta get Josh Donaldson back?
• Do they land that frontline starter they covet?
• Will it be Yasmani Grandall or a cheap-but-defensively-minded catcher?

Until you know the answers to these questions, it’s really pointless to even talk about whether Shane Greene’s potential contract needs to be eliminated from the payroll.

In fact (short of laying out gopher balls in March), you could make the case that Greene should be kept as an integral part regardless of the state of the rest of the pitching staff:

• If there’s no veteran rotation arm obtained, Atlanta will need a better bullpen to combat shorter outings by their starters.
• If there is a veteran rotation arm obtained, you’d be primed for a possible deep playoff run and bullpens are clearly important for that.

Look – miscues aside, Shane Greene is clearly a very talented pitcher who had an outstanding first 2/3rds of the season in 2019.

Nobody in their right mind is going to give up on him this quickly and even if circumstances somehow required it, there would be interested teams.  Greene will not be simply given away.

In the meantime, let’s just not pretend that Greene’s potential $6.5 million payroll slot is the solution to all of the Braves’ problems…let’s assemble the rest of the team first and then see if there’s a need to chat about that later.