Not even in the days of Bret Saberhagen and Mark Gubicza, or perhaps Dennis Leonard and Paul Splittorff, did the Kansas City Royals depend on pitching to this extent.
One of baseball's most pleasant stories in these early weeks, the Royals know Zack Greinke and Brian Bannister are not going to continue at their current pace. But they sure are willing to ride out their combined 6-0 record and 0.80 ERA as long as possible.
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| The Royals are happy to have Zack Greinke back and his fastball is devastating. (Getty Images) |
"It's been great," Royals left fielder Mark Teahen says in the year's biggest understatement (so far). "They've been doing exactly what you hope your starting pitchers can do."
Yeah, if you have a superhero rotation of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and maybe the Green Hornet.
By day, Bannister is an unassuming 27-year-old right-hander who was a teammate of Mark Prior and Anthony Reyes at the University of Southern California, and whose father, Floyd, pitched for six clubs in 15 major-league seasons. By night, Bannister is making life hell on the New York Mets for ever trading him for reliever Ambiorix Burgos before the 2007 season.
"His preparation is so good," Royals pitching coach Bob McClure says. "How he thinks. How he visualizes. It's as unique as I've seen, as far as someone being able to process the information he's using."
The Royals present their pitchers with video scouting reports as well as verbal and written reports, and one thing Bannister has the ability to do with the video, according to McClure, is "look and see holes in swings, and see swing paths." Royals coach Rusty Kuntz told McClure that when he was with Pittsburgh, Pirates closer Matt Capps had the ability to decipher an opposing hitter's swing pattern and be able to pitch above or below it. That's one of the traits that so far has set Bannister apart, too.
"I think the key to my success is that, every game I pitch, I have several adjustments to I can make," says Bannister, who doesn't have an overpowering fastball but is able to spot it and employ his curve and change-up to good effect. "I always have a game plan with several elements that I think will help me on that day."
Those elements include the weather, whether the opposing pitcher is hot or cold, which opposing hitters are hot and cold and how the team he's facing is playing at the time. You've heard how there are certain guys a pitcher shouldn't let beat him -- big swingers like, say, David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez? Bannister would rather face a cold slugger than a hot middle-of-the-road guy.
"I look at it almost like a heat map," he says. "Who's hot, who's on fire, who's cold."
Greinke is only 24, but he arrived in the bigs in 2004. It was premature, but the Royals, as you may have heard, have mostly been horrible over the past several seasons and they were desperate. Greinke has a filthy fastball, but the early arrival did him no favors. He left the team for most of 2006 to deal with severe depression and still prefers not to talk about it.
What he's done this season is figure out how to effectively use his fastball, adding and subtracting to it each time he throws it instead of simply rearing back and firing it as hard as possible.
