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Dodgers News: Zack Greinke Reflects On Scoreless Innings Streak

Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports
Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Zack Greinke’s strong season turned into a historic one as he strung together one scoreless start after another. He took the mound Sunday having thrown 43.2 scoreless innings and appearing destined for another shutout outing against a struggling New York Mets team.

Greinke ran into some bad luck in the third inning as he hit Kirk Nieuwenhuis with a pitch to put a runner on with no outs. A bloop single and a chopper to Adrian Gonzalez later scored a run, ending Greinke’s streak at 45.2 innings. Although he fell short of eclipsing Orel Hershiser, Greinke expressed a sense of relief now that it came to an end, according to Bill Plunkett of the OC Register:



If anything, I feel negative about it (the streak), having to deal with answering questions about it all the time,” Greinke said in typically blunt fashion.

Greinke ended up giving up two earned runs over seven innings in a 3-2 loss. He compared the scoreless streak to the difficulty in breaking the 56-game hitting streak:

Maybe it will get broken, but I know five years ago or so I thought that one and the DiMaggio streak (his 56-game hitting streak) were the two toughest (records to break),” Greinke said. “It looks like people are getting closer to the Hershiser one now, so maybe eventually it might happen.”

As for whether traveling back from Los Angeles had an impact on him Greinke, dismissed the idea:

Surprisingly, it wasn’t as distracting as you would think. Flying back and forth cross country wasn’t too bad,” he said. “I mean, I would complain but I started off doing well and got worse so you’d think if it would have affected me I would have started off bad and got better.”

The attention now shifts to fellow ace, Clayton Kershaw, who currently has a scoreless streak of 29 innings. Kershaw also had a scoreless streak of 41 innings last season, so he’s well aware of the difficulty that comes with approaching Hershiser’s record that’s held for 27 years.

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