The ballpark throbbed with elation when Arizona manager Chip Hale left his dugout on Monday night. An extra emotion filtered into the mix as Hale took the baseball from his starting pitcher: Vitriol. The fans at Dodger Stadium showered the pitcher with jeers as he tucked his chin to his chest and left the diamond.
The sight of Zack Greinke inside this park once delighted the denizens of Dodger Stadium. On Monday evening, as he suffered through a shellacking in his first start against his former team here in a 10-2 Los Angeles Dodgers victory, he was merely a member of an opposing club, an old friend clad in the murky grays of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Dodgers (77-60) knocked Greinke out of the game in the fifth inning in vicious fashion, hitting four home runs in a seven-batter sequence that was stunning in its efficiency and violence. Joc Pederson started the proceedings with a solo shot. Corey Seager unleashed a three-run homer. Justin Turner hit another in the next at-bat. And Yasmani Grandal, Greinke’s favored catcher last season, ended the pounding with a solo shot of his own.
In all, the team blitzed Greinke for eight runs, with a two-run homer from Adrian Gonzalez serving as a harbinger in the fourth. The fusillade obscured a triumphant night for Kenta Maeda, who struck out eight as he allowed one run in 6 1/3 innings.
The outing from Maeda underlined an unexpected reality – in 2016, he has been a more effective, more reliable pitcher than Greinke. And unlike Greinke, Maeda will almost certainly pitch in the playoffs. The victory expanded the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West to four games.
A year ago, Greinke served as one half of this team’s two-man foundation. Along with Clayton Kershaw, Greinke dragged the Dodgers into the playoffs. The team went 43-22 in games started by the duo, and 49-48 otherwise. Despite the fearsome pair, the team could not advance past the National League Division Series.
The Dodgers returned for 2016 as a deeper, more dexterous club, one no longer reliant on any single player. Propped up by Kershaw for the first three months of the season, the team played its best baseball since he herniated a disk in his lower back.
The fifth inning offered a microcosm of the difference between 2015 and 2016. Pederson is not caught in a second-half spiral. Seager is a candidate for the league’s Most Valuable Player award. Turner is not hampered by a knee requiring microfracture surgery. And Grandal no longer suffers the discomfort of a shoulder that requires arthroscopic surgery.
Greinke could have been apart of this group. The Dodgers had entered the final stages of negotiations with him this winter when Arizona barrelled into the competition and offered a six-year, $206 million contract.
Greinke joined a team with inflated aspirations. Arizona has plummeted 21 games below .500, with a 19-game deficit separating them from the Dodgers, and an Opening Day starter who contributed to the disaster. Greinke finished Monday with a 4.54 earned-run average.