Zack Greinke shocks baseball world, agrees to deal with Diamondbacks

The baseball world has been shaken up with this latest bombshell. The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have been in a bidding war of sorts over ERA champ and NL Cy Young Candidate Zack Greinke. However, MLB Insider Ken Rosenthal reports that Greinke isn’t returning to LA nor is he going to their main rival, the Giants. Greinke has agreed to a six year, $206.5 Million deal with the MLB’s most improved team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Greinke went 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA last season with the Dodgers. He’s been with Dodgers for the past three seasons, going 51-15. Greinke is 142-93 in his career and won the Cy Young in 2009 with the Kansas City Royals.

Jon Heyman of CBS SPORTS reports that the Dodgers offered Greinke $31M a year for five years and never felt comfortable going six years on a 32 year old pitcher. If my calculations are correct, that’s $155M. We all knew he’d conmand more than that, so it’s kind of a low-ball offer in my opinion.

Annual Average Value on this contract is $34.4M,  according to an evenly spread breakdown of the contract. That would make him the highest paid player in MLB history.

For those interested, the DBacks, after being rejected by Johnny Cueto, met with Mike Leake on Thursday. They have told Leake’s agent that they are still interested after the Greinke signing.