Safe at home: Greinke perfect at Chase

PHOENIX -- It was Zack Greinke to the rescue on Saturday for the D-backs. Arizona entered the game in a three-game skid and needed a stopper; Greinke was exactly that for Arizona, scattering three hits over seven innings while striking out eight en route to his 10th win of the year as the D-backs topped the Rockies, 6-2.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" Arizona reliever Archie Bradley said of Greinke. "You watch him and it seems like he's a man among boys out there sometimes, the way he was dotting pitches and mixing stuff. His sequences, it's almost like watching somebody paint a picture, man."
After surrendering a third-inning infield single to Mike Tauchman, Greinke didn't allow a hit until the seventh and carved up the Rockies by consistently spotting his fastball. He received 14 called strikes on his heater, and ticked up his velocity a bit -- he maxed out at 92.7 mph in contrast to his 90.6 season average. He balanced that with a bevy of offspeed pitches and drew five swinging strikes on his curveball.
"Today was probably the best I've thrown the curveball, like where I want," Greinke. "I wouldn't say it's the best one I've thrown, but I was able to throw it where I want it, so that was good to get ahead in the count with some of those pitches."
The lone blemish on his pitching line came on a full count homer from Trevor Story that had just a 16 percent chance of landing for a hit, according to Statcast™. Story now owns four homers off of Greinke in 19 career at-bats. The homer came on a slider that Greinke tucked low and away -- in a region of the strike zone where Story has registered his lowest exit velocity on balls in play this season -- but he poked it over the left field fence nonetheless.
"He can hit it, that's for sure," Greinke said. "I threw a couple more slightly farther-out balls that he took before that, so it was a good job of hitting. It wasn't a perfect pitch, but it was a good pitch and he did a good job with it."
Saturday's game marked the fourth time this year that Greinke has delivered a win on a day after a D-back loss. He is 8-0 in starts at Chase Field this season and his 124 strikeouts are the seventh-most in baseball this season.
"Great night from Zack," Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. "Exactly what we needed from our guy, our number one. He stepped up a ton; we had lost three games in a row and he went out there and executed a great gameplan against a very offensive team. … I really felt like he was in control of every inning."