Wearing a bright white hat, a light green shirt and camo shorts, Zack Greinke stood on the mound at Salt River Fields on Friday afternoon and peered in for a sign. He shook it off. Then shook off another. When he finally threw the pitch, it arrived with his signature delivery, loud grunt and all.
Greinke, who is 40 years old and a free agent, was throwing a live batting practice session against Diamondbacks’ hitters. He sounds interested in continuing his playing career, but he is not sure if he will. He is feeling it out, he said, and the Diamondbacks, one of his former employers, have been allowing him to do so at their facility.
“My arm feels decent at the moment,” Greinke said. “I was trying to get as good as I could at golfing the past two months, and I was like, ‘Why am I trying to be a pro golfer when I’m already kind of a pro baseball player?’ So I figured I’d throw a little and see how it goes.”
Greinke, who spent the past two seasons with the Kansas City Royals, said he began throwing in earnest only about two weeks ago. He said he makes “hundreds” of throws to his young boys, who asked him to try throwing a pitch as hard he could.
His boys — two of whom, Bode and Griffin, accompanied him to Salt River on Friday — were interested in shagging fly balls at a spring training facility, so Greinke, whose family moved to Arizona full time this year, reached out to the Diamondbacks.
Where it goes from here, he said, depends on how his arm and body feel. He said his agent has not yet got the word out to teams about potentially signing somewhere “because it’s still early.”
