Atlanta Braves: Grass wasn’t Greener in 2019, how will Shane Greene fare in 2020?
By Josh Mathews
the All-Star
2019 was a bit of a different season for Shane Greene. For one, he stopped being average and started being great. Over the first half of the season for the Tigers, he was flat out dominant. He racked up 22 saves for a team that finished 2019 with just 47 wins. His ERA was just 1.18, his WHIP was a microscopic 0.86, but his FIP came in at 3.69.
As for his FIP, this suggests that Greene was definitely good – but got pretty lucky in terms of his fielding helping him out. Remember, FIP measures how good a pitcher is at getting strikeouts, and preventing things like walks, hit batters and home runs.
No one is trying to take away from Greene’s All-Star first half, but let’s a look at his ERA/FIP splits for his career.
- 2014: 3.78 ERA /3.73 FIP
- 2015: 6.88 ERA/5.14 FIP
- 2016: 5.82 ERA/3.13 FIP
- 2017: 2.66 ERA/3.84 FIP
- 2018: 5.12 ERA/4.61 FIP
- 2019: 1.18 ERA/3.69 FIP (with Tigers)
- 2019: 4.01 ERA/3.94 FIP
Looking at these numbers and throwing out 2015 and 2018, his two worst seasons, that his FIP sits somewhere in the mid to upper 3’s. He was having a lucky, but average year during the first half of 2019.
Greene, the Atlanta Braves pitcher
So with that point made, when the Atlanta Braves acquired Greene for Joey Wentz and Travis Demeritte at the trading deadline, did they expect him to keep up that 1.18 ERA? Probably not, but they sure hoped so.
Atlanta Braves fans expected him to come in and blow away people. Like say, John Rocker at his peak or Craig Kimbrel.
Greene didn’t. It wasn’t as drastic as Cinderella pre- and post-midnight, but he simply just returned to his averages.
His first two outings, even his four of his first six outings were particularly concerning. He didn’t post a clean inning, lost a game, and blew two saves. That stretch from August 3 to August 13 was one to forget for Greene.
However, the rest of the season that spanned 21 appearances, he only gave up earned runs three times- one twice, and two once.
None of those three appearances resulted in a loss or a blown save for the Atlanta Braves. Over those 20.1 innings, he allowed just four runs. That’s a 1.77 ERA. Lucky or not, that re-aligned him with what Atlanta Braves fans expected… he just wasn’t doing it in the closer’s role. That job was Mark Melancon‘s.
Worth mentioning, Greene did blow a save in game 4 of the NLDS. He struck out the side but allowed a run to score that tied the game at four.