This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
It's one start in, but I'm already intrigued by the Shane Green comeback story in 2016. I'm afraid I may have undersold the level of his comeback when I made the following prediction last month:
Shane Greene earns at least $5 in AL-Only Leagues. "Way to go out on a limb there, Collette." Yeah, I hear you, but remember -- he destroyed fantasy owners in 2015. Only Jerome Williams did more damage to fantasy rosters than Greene did. Greene's 2015 stuff was as bad as his 2014 stuff was good because of a blood clotting issue. There were times in 2015 where he literally could not feel the baseball in his hand because he had numbness in his index and middle fingers -- fingers that are kind of important when throwing a baseball. Compare his Plate Discipline numbers (via Fangraphs) over the past two seasons:
YEAR OUT of ZONE CONTACT% IN ZONE CONTACT% CONTACT% SWINGING STRIKE% 2014 65 88 77 10 2015 73 93 85 7
The second link there talked about Greene being unable to feel the baseball in his hands for most of last year, and he had that nerve issue corrected with offseason surgery.
It's one start in, but I'm already intrigued by the Shane Green comeback story in 2016. I'm afraid I may have undersold the level of his comeback when I made the following prediction last month:
Shane Greene earns at least $5 in AL-Only Leagues. "Way to go out on a limb there, Collette." Yeah, I hear you, but remember -- he destroyed fantasy owners in 2015. Only Jerome Williams did more damage to fantasy rosters than Greene did. Greene's 2015 stuff was as bad as his 2014 stuff was good because of a blood clotting issue. There were times in 2015 where he literally could not feel the baseball in his hand because he had numbness in his index and middle fingers -- fingers that are kind of important when throwing a baseball. Compare his Plate Discipline numbers (via Fangraphs) over the past two seasons:
YEAR OUT of ZONE CONTACT% IN ZONE CONTACT% CONTACT% SWINGING STRIKE% 2014 65 88 77 10 2015 73 93 85 7
The second link there talked about Greene being unable to feel the baseball in his hands for most of last year, and he had that nerve issue corrected with offseason surgery. I bring that article back up to reference something my friend Eno Sarris wrote at Fangraphs the other day that featured Greene. In the piece, Eno noted that Greene did not throw one changeup and that was a pitch he used 9 percent of the time in 2015. The start was all fastballs and breaking balls -- four types of breaking balls. Eno went on to talk about how many relievers have talked about how the slider is a feel pitch.
Collin McHugh had this to say about his cutter: "The more I've gotten the feel for it, the more I've been able to do both with it." The title of this article talks about how Greene's teammate, Justin Verlander, has lost the feel for his slider and it's been a problem for him since he reported to camp. The author, Chris McCosky, noted the Pirates were laying off his slider and waiting to pounce on fastballs the other night when they chased Verlander before five innings in his last outing.
Getting back to Greene, what he did against Pittsburgh brought back memories of what he did for the Yankees in 2014. Let's look at the pitches in the embedded video clip below:
• 86 mph breaking ball to strike out Andrew McCutchen
• 85 mph breaking ball to get Josh Harrison to go too far with his check swing
• 90 mph cutter(?) to get Jordy Mercer looking
• 83 mph breaking ball to get the pitcher (yawn) swinging
• 83 mph breaking ball to again get McCutchen swinging
• 80 mph breaking ball to give McCutchen a hat trick on the night
• 88 mph cutter/slider to get Starling Marte swinging
Again, this was a lineup that put a hurting on Verlander just two nights earlier but then struggled against the breaking stuff of first Anibal Sanchez and then Greene. Greene generated 14 swings and misses against the Pirates in that outing. Greene only had one outing all season in 2015 where he had as many as 10 swings and misses and it came in his first outing against Minnesota that season, and he had not generated 14 swings and misses since an outing against his current team back on Aug. 27, 2014.
One thing that is noticeable in the early data with Greene is the return of his spin rate. In simple terms, the more a ball spins, the more it moves during a pitch. The more movement on a pitch, the less likely a batter is to make hard contact let alone any contact. A four-seam fastball with more spin will have more "rise" to it -- which is what makes Chris Young a serviceable pitcher for Kansas City despite the fact his fastball would likely bounce off a window. A high spin rate is what allows Koji Uehara to blow 90 mph by and over the swing of Curtis Granderson as displayed in this 2013 animated GIF:
The table below shows the spin rate on Greene's pitches over the past three seasons (data via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com):
| PITCH | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 |
| 2-Seam | 2,136 | 2,134 | 2,069 |
| Slider | 1,103 | 1,031 | 1,120 |
| Curve | 1,439 | 1,253 | 1,314 |
| 4-Seam | 2,002 | 2,021 | 1,877 |
| Change | 1,906 | 1,792 | n/a |
Take particular note of the spin rate on Greene's "feel" pitches -- the slider, the curve and the changeup. While the spin rate on his fastballs last season were right on par with 2014, the other pitchers were each below what the spin rate was in 2014. The curve isn't fully back to where it was in 2014, but perhaps some of the unseasonably cold weather this season is partly to blame for everyone not being as sharp as they should be this time of year. Many pitchers above Greene's weight class are struggling statistically out of the gate. That said, his spin rates on his breaking pitches are trending back in a positive direction while the jury is still out on the changeup as he has yet to throw one in 2016.
Again, less spin increases batters ability to make contact with the pitch. In Greene's case, batters made much more contact with his feel pitches last season than they did in 2014 and made him pay for it:
| YEAR | PITCHES | AVG | OBP | SLG | CONTACT% | SWING STRIKE% |
| 2014 | 339 | .169 | .182 | .323 | 55 | 19 |
| 2015 | 314 | .260 | .274 | .481 | 79 | 10 |
It was initially believed that Greene was just keeping Daniel Norris's spot warm in the rotation until Norris is healthy, but that may no longer be the case.
Ausmus said Shane Greene isn't just holding a rotation spot until Daniel Norris gets healthy. "If he pitches well, he'll stay there."
— Chris McCosky (@cmccosky) April 6, 2016
It's one start, but it was a darn good one. Even in his last spring training outing, he struck out nine Orioles. He was complete garbage last year and torched a lot of fantasy hopes in 2015, but he's looking good this season and might still be on the waiver wire in your league. If he is, he is a two-start pitcher in the next period, and we'll see an excellent test for him as he goes up against Kansas City on Tuesday night before finishing the week with an easier Cleveland lineup on Sunday.
