Diamondbacks Greinke Impressive Against Rangers

In making his fourth start of spring training, Arizona Diamondbacks’ ace Zach Greinke looks like he is ready to start the season.

The newly acquired member of the Diamondbacks pitched 5 2/3 shutout innings against the Texas Rangers on Sunday for an 11-1 Arizona win.

Although not totally satisfied with his fastball, Greinke was very effective and said he learned a few things from this outing, “The fastball was good a decent amount of time, just not all the time,” said Greinke after the game.

“My goal is to locate the fastball and that was all right, it wasn’t great. I learned something a little bit about where I throw the fastball good, where I don’t throw it good and hopefully that will make it easier for the next couple of outings and when the season starts,” Greinke added. “Change up was good, slider was pretty good, curve was pretty good.”

The Diamondacks have won 10 out of their last 11 spring training games.

On the offensive side, Wellington Castillo hit a home run for the Diamondbacks, giving him three for the spring.   Castillo has 12 hits this spring, 11 of them have gone for extra base hits.

The Diamndbacks have improved to 15 – 4 in spring training.

Arizona will face the Reds on Sunday and will follow against the Brewers and Giants on Monday and Tuesday.

Before spring training started the Arizona Diamondbacks agreed to terms on one-year contracts for the 2016 season with 25 pre-arbitration players:

Right-handed Pitchers (11) – Jake Barrett, Silvino Bracho, Archie Bradley, Enrique Burgos, Zack Godley, Cody Hall, Keith Hessler, Matt Koch, Dominic Leone, Evan Marshall and Tyler Wagner;

Left-handed Pitchers (2) – Andrew Chafin and Robbie Ray;

Catchers (3) – Tuffy Gosewisch, Oscar Hernández and Chris Herrmann;

Infielders (5) – Nick Ahmed, Brandon Drury, Phil Gosselin, Jake Lamb and Chris Owings;

Outfielders (4) – Sócrates Brito, Gabriel Guerrero, Peter O’Brien and David Peralta.

The D-backs now have all players on the 40-man roster under contract for the 2016 season.