Atlanta Braves: Grass wasn’t Greener in 2019, how will Shane Greene fare in 2020?

The Atlanta Braves made a splash at last year’s trading deadline to reel in Tigers closer Shane Greene. However, Greene didn’t continue his dominance he had over in the AL for a last place team. What can we expect in 2020?

Shane Greene had humble beginnings before the Atlanta Braves. He toiled through the Yankees minor league system slowly and methodically, finally making the majors in 2014 during his age 25 season. Initially, he was a starting pitcher, and performed well as a rookie in the Bronx. He pitched to a solid 3.78 ERA and won six games over 14 starts.

That solid performance was enough to get some mileage out of Greene in a trade package. That offseason, Greene was sent to Detroit as a part of a three team deal. In that deal, the Tigers sent prospects Robbie Ray and Domingo Leyba to Arizona, and Arizona sent shortstop Didi Gregorius to the Yankees.

The trade turned out okay for everyone, and the net for each team was a solid (or better than solid in Ray and Gregorius) major league player each.

In 2015, the Tigers kept Greene as a starter, and things went terribly, as opponents launched 13 home runs off him and he pitched to a 6.88 ERA over 83.2 innings. His FIP was 5.14.

Since we’ll be talking a lot about FIP in this article, let’s define it. FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, meaning: how good is this pitcher at getting strikeouts and preventing walks, hit batters and avoiding giving up home runs.

Some argue that FIP is a more true measure of how good a pitcher really is.

In simpler terms, it takes out any ‘bad luck’ caused by fielding. When comparing Greene’s 2015 ERA of 6.88 ERA and his FIP of 5.12, you could say that Greene’s numbers were inflated by a bit of bad luck. Remember how this works for later.

Greene’s best season pre-2019 was his 2017 season where he eventually earned the Tigers’ closer role after being moved to the bullpen, notching nine saves. He pitched to a 2.66 ERA that year.

In 2018, he picked up 32 saves, but did so with a 5.12 ERA. So impressive, but highly stressful. We all know Atlanta Braves fans hate a stressful reliever.

To sum it up, before the 2019 season, Greene was worth 0.1 WAR – meaning he was just a tick above replacement level… he was a very average pitcher.