Odds and ends (and of course more on Greinke)

Zack Greinke is awesome, but more on that later. First I want to talk about Jose Guillen. A lot was made of his on base struggles last season and many acted like that was a typical season for him, which of course wasn't true. Basically I cut him some slack and expected some improvement this season and predicted it in this post. People either ignore or are unaware that from 2003-2007 Guillen hit .286/.343/.489 with a 119 OPS+ (and this includes an injury filled stinker in 2006 when he put up a 75 OPS+). I do realize that a lot of the criticism was contract related and he definitely wasn't worth 12 million dollars - I doubt he ever will be. But that's not to say that he can't be productive and he certainly has been this season.

The Royals are 8-5 when he plays and ironically were 8-5 in his first thirteen games last season but look at the difference in his production.

Year	HR/RBI	BB/K	AVG/OBP/SLG
2008	0/5	2/12	.151/.182/.208
2009	3/11	6/7	.298/.389/.532

At his age that would seem to be an unsustainable pace but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if he hit .300/.350/.500 this season, however a .285/.345/.450 line seems more reasonable.
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I'm still not worried about Mike Aviles because his bat is finally coming around. After an 0/4 game on April 24th his line read .169/.180/.203 but in the eight games since he has hit .310/.333/.517 covering 31 plate appearances.
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Zack Greinke is 6-0 with a 0.40 ERA and a ridiculous 1173 ERA+. I thought it would be fun to compare his 2009 campaign to other great seasons (think Saberhagen '89, not '87). One column will be their first six starts and the other will be their final numbers. The seasons I chose are pretty much random but include many of the great pitchers of the last thirty years. They all won the CY Young award.

Player	Year	Six Starts	Season
Lee	2008	6-0 0.81	22-3 2.54
Johnson	2002	6-0 1.37	24-5 2.32
Martinez	1999	5-1 2.06	23-4 2.07
Maddux	1995	3-1 2.68	19-2 1.63
Saberhagen	1989	2-2 3.34	23-6 2.16
Clemens	1986	5-0 1.99	24-4 2.68
Saberhagen	1985	2-3 4.62	20-6 2.87
Gooden	1985	4-1 1.57	24-4 1.53