LOS ANGELES -- Like a lot of baseball fans, Zack Greinke was glued to his laptop in the hours leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline.
Unlike most fans, Greinke has enough insight into the process -- from having been traded twice and from knowing some of the people involved -- that he feels he can separate fact from fiction as rumors swirl.
Then again, maybe not.
“Not really, because there’s some stupid stuff that actually does happen,” Greinke said. “I can tell a lot by who writes it. Some guys are considered really good in the industry, but I’ll look at them and know they write a lot of stupid stuff. There’s a lot of guys, if they write it, I’ll pretty much believe what they wrote.”
Greinke follows the baseball draft closely.
When he was in Milwaukee, he would frequently chat with general manager Doug Melvin about personnel moves he was considering. When he toured Dodger Stadium two winters ago, he complimented Los Angeles Dodgers GM Ned Colletti for taking infielder Corey Seager with the team’s first draft pick the previous June.
He has said he wouldn’t mind being a general manager when his playing days end.
So, how does Greinke break down the action Thursday?
On the Dodgers, whose only move was to trade for utility infielder Darwin Barney:
“I’m sure we were trying to do stuff, but you just can’t be stupid about things. It seemed this year people were giving up a lot more than they usually do for a proven talent, compared to last year or the year before. It seemed like you could give up your eighth-best prospect for a pretty good player, where this year it seemed like that same player would be getting like the third-best prospect. I know we don’t want to give up one of our top three guys, and I think that’s pretty smart. Those guys look pretty good.”
On other teams:
“If you’re talking about who got better this year, it seems like the Cardinals did some pretty good stuff just for this season and the Yankees did, too, over the course of the last month. I like the Brewers’ move a lot, getting Gerardo Parra. It’s a small move, but they’ve been kind of short on left-handed hitting and to get a lefty that hits right-handed pitchers well could prove valuable for their team.”