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Tampa Bay Rays jack three homers off Zack Greinke, who makes $9 million more than their entire lineup
Julio Aguilar
It was a tough Monday for Zack Greinke. OK, OK. It was a tough Monday for everybody, but especially Greinke, who took the mound in game three of the ALDS with a sweep and a potential ALCS berth on the line. But it didn't go that way. Not even close. In 3.2 innings of work, the Astros acquisition coughed up three homers and six runs in what will probably go down as the worst postseason start of his career. Over the course of his crappy afternoon, Greinke managed to transform The Trop, an infamous home field disadvantage, into the Fillmore East with Zeppelin on stage.
We all have bad days at the office, of course, but the context made things even uglier for Greinke. First, the other two heads of the Astros rotation hydra, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, were both excellent in their starts in games one and two. And then there is the small of matter of the Rays, who have built a competitive ball club repurposing other teams' discarded scraps (see: Travis d'Arnaud) into useful specialists. This means the Rays play with a chip on their shoulder. It also means their lineup is very, very cheap. How cheap? Like $8.9 million dollars cheaper than Greinke cheap.
Woof, nothing like starting the week off with a slice of humble pie so big your ego needs the heimlich. The only savings grace is that Greinke doesn't know nor care if the Rays batters are renters or owners. In fact, from the sound of things, they're far the only thing he doesn't give a sh*t about.