Hit and Run: Greinke finally gets support, Correa keeps it 100 mph

In today's Hit and Run, Jay Jaffe looks at the quietly excellent season of Zack Greinke and the eye-popping hitting stats of Carlos Correa, who is scalding the ball with impressive frequency.

1. Dodgers have Zack's back, for a change

Zack Greinke finally got a bit of support from his teammates on Sunday against the Marlins: two whole runs, as many as the Dodgers had scored for him—and as many as he himself had allowed—in his previous three outings. Thanks to that outburst, Greinke notched his first win since May 5, spinning his longest scoreless start of the season at 7 2/3 innings to lower his league-leading ERA to 1.58.

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Indeed, while the baseball world has been asking, "What's wrong with Clayton Kershaw?" (answer: Not a lot besides his 17.2% home-run-to-fly-ball rate, around 2 1/2 times his previous career norm), Greinke's season has flown under the radar. It's been the 31-year-old righty's best year since his 2009 AL Cy Young-winning campaign, and one of the best in the entire league: Beyond the ERA, he's second in the Baseball-Reference.com version of WAR (4.3, behind only Max Scherzer's 4.5) and innings (108 1/3), tied for sixth in walk rate (1.7 per nine) and seventh in FIP (2.84).

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Greinke's season thus far is its sheer consistency. He's pitched at least six innings in each of his 16 starts and allowed two runs or fewer in 13 of them; he's done scoreless work in five of them, allowed one run in six, two runs once, three runs twice and five runs once. That total of 13 stingy starts is tied with Shelby Miller for the major league lead. Miller has managed that in one fewer start, and while he has two complete games (Greinke has none), he's also worked shorter than six innings three times.

Greinke's total of 15 quality starts not only leads the majors (Kershaw is second with 13), but his 94% rate is also among the best in recent history. Using a 16-start cutoff to include both him and one strike-shortened season, here's the leaderboard for the post-1992 expansion era:

rank	player	year	team	gs	qs	qs%	era
1	Greg Maddux	1994	Braves	25	24	96.0	1.56
2	Zack Greinke	2015	Dodgers	16	15	93.8	1.58
3	Clayton Kershaw	2014	Dodgers	27	24	88.9	1.77
4	Felix Hernandez	2010	Mariners	34	30	88.2	2.27
5	Joey Hamilton	1994	Padres	16	14	87.5	2.98
6	Pedro Martinez	2000	Red Sox	29	25	86.2	1.74
7	Randy Johnson	2002	D-backs	35	30	85.7	2.32
8	Johnny Cueto	2014	Reds	34	29	85.3	2.25
9	Felix Hernandez	2009	Mariners	34	29	85.3	2.49
10	Kevin Appier	1993	Royals	34	29	85.3	2.56

That's some outstanding company: three Hall of Famers (Johnson, Martinez and Maddux) en route to Cy Young-winning seasons plus two other Cy Young winners (Hernandez in 2010 and Kershaw). All of the aforementioned led their leagues in ERA that season, as did Appier.

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​Greinke's opposite numbers have been nearly as stifling lately, holding the Dodgers to two runs or fewer in eight of his last nine starts. The one time he got more was on June 2 in Colorado, where the Dodgers' nine runs were enough to paper over his season-high five allowed. Prior to that, he'd actually been well-supported; the team scored 33 runs in his first seven starts, and so his overall mark of 3.8 runs per game isn't anything close to the league's lowest rate.

Still, despite his relatively unassuming 6–2 won-loss record, Greinke belongs in the NL Cy Young discussion, which Cliff Corcoran will take up in Wednesday's Awards Watch, and he's likely to net himself quite a windfall this winter assuming he exercises the opt-out clause in his contract. He's guaranteed $71 million over the next three seasons, and barring injury, there's little reason to think he can't better his current six-year, $147 million deal, particularly given that the Dodgers would likely be among the bidders.

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Bob Levey/Getty Images

​2. The start of a great Correa

Astros shortstop Carlos Correa has been as advertised thus far, looking big-league-ready at the tender age of 20 and showing why he was the No. 1 pick of the 2012 draft. Not only did he hit a home run off the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka on Saturday, but he also had a comical "Little League homer" on Sunday, scoring on his own hit by way of an error and some downright sloppy defense. His fourth-inning fly ball fell between leftfielder Garrett Jones and centerfielder Brett Gardner; the latter slipped and fell amid his attempt to pick it up, then uncorked a throw as flat as last week's champagne while Correa motored around the bases:

Whew! The run tied the score in a game the Astros went on to win, 3–1, enabling them to salvage a split from their four-game series with the Yankees and, at 44–34, remain four games ahead of the pack in the AL West. It didn't count as a homer for Correa; it was scored a double and a two-base error on Gardner. Even so, he has five homers to go with a .314/.337/.593 line thus far, and his 14 extra-base hits through his first 20 games are tied for second in the post-1992 expansion era:

rank	player	year	team	2b	3b	hr	xbh
1	Chris Dickerson	2008	Reds	8	2	6	16
2T	Jeff Francoeur	2005	Braves	7	0	7	14
	Brennan Boesch	2010	Tigers	9	2	3	14
	Josh Rutledge	2012	Rockies	6	2	6	14
	Carlos Correa	2015	Astros	9	0	5	14
6T	Craig Paquette	1993	Athletics	8	1	4	13
	Jorge Soler	2014	Cubs	7	1	5	13
	Carlos Santana	2010	Indians	9	0	4	13
	Hunter Pence	2007	Astros	6	3	4	13
	Stephen Drew	2006	D-backs	8	3	2	13
	Daric Barton	2007	A's	9	0	4	13
	Mike Aviles	2008	Royals	9	1	3	13

Meanwhile, Correa's 51 total bases over those 20 games rank eighth in that same span, with the 2013 edition of Yasiel Puig leading the pack with 58, followed by Dickerson and Rutledge with 56.

Indeed, Correa has been scalding the ball. Via Baseball Savant's Daren Wilman, he has the majors' highest percentage of batted balls with an exit velocity of at least 100 miles per hour:

rank	player	team	100+	bip	pct 100+
1	Carlos Correa	Astros	24	67	35.8
2	Giancarlo Stanton	Marlins	66	187	35.3
3	Joc Pederson	Dodgers	52	163	31.9
4	Randal Grichuk	Cardinals	31	98	31.6
5	Mike Trout	Angels	65	206	31.6
6	Danny Valencia	Blue Jays	25	81	30.9
7	Miguel Cabrera	Tigers	65	211	30.8
8	Jorge Soler	Cubs	38	124	30.6
9	Yoenis Cespedes	Tigers	68	223	30.5
10	Ryan Howard	Phillies	54	180	30.0

Obviously, the sample size is small given his recent arrival, but when the ball is rocketing off your bat with a frequency to rival Stanton, Pederson, Trout and Cabrera, you're keeping excellent company.

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Speaking of Little League home runs, at this past weekend's Society for American Baseball Research conference in Chicago, they were the subject of an award-winning presentation by Chuck Hildebrandt. Alas, I was not in attendance, so I don't have any facts and figures to accompany that note, but I do have links to videos of the Cubs' Kris Bryant (April 20 against the Pirates), the Cardinals' Mark Reynolds (April 23 against the Nationals), the Pirates' Starling Marte (June 15 against the White Sox) and the Rays' Steven Souza Jr. (June 17 against the Nationals) performing the feat earlier this season. Here's Souza's, which began as a bunt and was no doubt aided by the wet conditions:

Sloppy and silly, for sure, but also vastly entertaining. Cue “Yackety Sax”!