Overview:
Michael McGreevy posted a career earned run average of 2.32 and a win-loss record of 15-3 during his UCSB pitching career, with 184 strikeouts and just 31 walks in 182 2/3 innings
Michael McGreevy cleaned up in professional baseball, signing a $2.75 million contract just a month after throwing his last pitch for UC Santa Barbara in June 2021.
But he also was still cleaning up for the Gauchos four months after that.
“We’re in the weight room,” UCSB coach Andrew Checketts told Noozhawk, “and we’ve got this guy who’s got millions in his pocket — a first-round draft pick — hanging around with a spray bottle and towel, wiping down the machines after our guys were done working out.
“He was there as part of some work study program, finishing up his degree, and I thought that was very cool.”
McGreevy has been a true study in work ethic throughout his baseball career.
It propelled him to the mound at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium on Saturday for a scintillating season debut as the Cardinals’ No. 2 starting pitcher.
He drew raves from manager Oliver Marmol after throwing six innings of no-hit, no-run baseball against the Tampa Bay Rays.
A bullpen meltdown forced the Cardinals to win the game with a 10th-inning, walk-off hit.
“He did a really nice job of navigating that lineup,” Marmol said.
The 25-year-old McGreevy didn’t even make Marmol’s Opening Day roster out of last year’s spring training despite an earned-run average of just 1.08 in five strong starts.
He followed that up this spring with a win-loss record of 4-0, a 2.45 ERA, 16 strikeouts and just two walks in 18⅓ innings.
But last season’s snub made him give pause just before the Cardinals made their final cuts earlier last week.
“I’ve been joking with guys that I can go be perfect out there and I still won’t make the team, like I felt like I was last year,” McGreevy said. “Everyone’s always like, ‘You’re penciled in there’ … I thought I was pretty much penciled in last year.
“I’m not being a disgruntled employee at all. That’s fine. I thought I did a good job handling that last year. Nothing is guaranteed.
“I just want to continue building to be the best pitcher I can be.”
Short-Circuited
McGreevy wasn’t sure he even wanted to be a pitcher when he committed to UCSB after appearing in the EBS (Elite Baseball Series) showcase before his junior season at San Clemente High School.
“I wanted to be a shortstop,” he said. “In high school, that was what I was banking on … going on to be a professional shortstop.”
Checketts recruited him to UCSB as a “two-way” player.
“We didn’t know if he was going to be a shortstop or was going to pitch, we just thought he was going to do something,” he said. “He was a good baseball player.
“He could really play defense, and he was a left-handed hitter.
“He was a late bloomer on the mound, and we got him fairly early … He was throwing 83 (mph) and probably weighed 145 pounds when we committed him.”
Checketts is known in baseball circles as the “Pitcher Whisperer” for his knack of identifying and then developing young pitching talent.
His approach has been to target athletic strike-throwers who haven’t yet matured physically.
“Welcome to midmajor baseball recruiting,” he said with a laugh.
Checketts has had 36 of his Gaucho pitchers drafted since becoming UCSB’s head coach in 2012.
The cream of that crop have included Shane Bieber, the American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020, plus such first-round draft picks as McGreevy (2021), Dillon Tate (2015) and Tyler Bremner (2025).
Baseball America recently projected Jackson Flora, the ace of this year’s UCSB club, as the No. 2 pick in next summer’s Major League Baseball draft.
That’s the same spot where Bremner was drafted last year by the Los Angeles Angels.
“Bieber, Bremner, Flora all kind of fit that mold,” Checketts said. “We knew mother nature was going to help them out.
“Guys that throw strikes have a tendency to come to college and throw strikes, so it gives them a chance to help you early in their career even if their stuff isn’t elite yet.”
McGreevy was throwing in the 86-88 mph range when Checketts checked him out during the fall of his senior year in high school.
“He was moving OK, but it was strikes,” he said. “By the time the spring season rolled around — about midspring — we started getting calls from scouts.
“The velocity had crept up and he was starting to throw harder, and he was starting to get some pro attention at that point.”
Rookie Move
McGreevy still had dreams of becoming a big-league shortstop. He worked out with UCSB’s position players during the fall of his freshman year before Checketts directed him toward the mound full-time.
“It became pretty obvious halfway through the fall that he was going to be a big part of our pitching staff,” he said. “He was further away from that offensively, so we didn’t want to spend a lot of time and energy on the offensive side and take away how he was going to help us on the mound.
“I don’t think he was very pumped about that. They all want to hit.”
McGreevy nevertheless pumped up the Gauchos the following spring during their run to the Big West Conference championship.
His record of 4-1 with five saves and a 1.84 ERA earned him a spot on the All-Big West First Team as a relief pitcher.
“He was the stopper his freshman year and threw a gazillion, high-leverage innings for us on a good team,” Checketts said. “I felt like he was going to be a starter at some point.”
McGreevy went 2-0 with a 0.99 ERA in 27⅓ innings during a 2020 sophomore season that was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He finished his Gaucho career with an All-America season in 2021. He posted a 9-2 record and 2.92 ERA in 16 starts for a team that advanced to the NCAA regional at Tucson, Arizona.
The Cardinals took him with the 18th pick of that summer’s MLB draft.
“Good athlete, strike thrower, quick arm,” Checketts said when asked to describe his dependable righthander. “It was pretty obvious that it was a good recruiting decision to have him in our program.
“Fast motor. Worker. Competitive. He got better because of all those things he had.”
McGreevy, like Bieber before him, didn’t blow batters away with the fastest of pitches. He averaged only 90.7 mph with his four-seam fastball during Saturday’s pitching gem.
But he struck out five — several on a newly developed changeup — walked only two and allowed no hits while throwing 96 pitches. No two of them seemed the same.
The key, McGreevy said, was “keeping those hitters off balance.”
“I was using all seven of my pitches today for both lefties and righties, especially when they set up the lineup with lefties — and good lefties, at that,” he said. “I was really happy to keep them at bay.”
His fastball averaged about 93 mph last year — below-average for a big-league starter — in the 17 games he pitched for the Cardinals.
His strikeout rate of 14.5% and chase rate of 25.3% were also below the MLB average.
But McGreevey’s ability to locate pitches, punctuated by a devilish sinkerball, helped him fashion a win-loss record of 8-4 and ERA of 4.42.
“He knows all of it gets back to beating it into the ground,” Marmol said.
It’s Groundhog Day for ground balls every time he takes the mound.
Sinking Feeling
The sinker became the main weapon in his arsenal after Checketts and UCSB pitching coach Dylan Jones tweaked his grip during a training session after his second season in the minors.
“I came back for the Alumni Weekend, and was throwing a bullpen with the coaches, and they’re like, ‘Hey, try this sinker … It’s been working for some of our guys,’” McGreevy said.
“And all of a sudden, it’s just diving off the table. I’m like, ‘Oh my God! Absolutely!’”
His ground-ball rate of 48% ranked in the 76th percentile for all MLB pitchers last year. His walk rate of 5% put him in the 93rd percentile.
“He knows how to pitch, and his repertoire has gotten better over the years,” Checketts said. “He’s added pitches, and he’ll continue to do that, I think.
“Athletic, competitive strike-throwers … there’s room for those in those rotations, whether it’s at the top, middle or the bottom, depending on how it’s going for them.
“We’ve seen Shane make quite a career for himself while throwing in the low-90s, and he won a Cy Young. Michael is fully capable of being successful up there for a long time.”
McGreevy’s competitiveness helped him navigate the constant, 284-mile drives he made back-and-forth last year from Memphis’ AutoZone Park — home of the Cardinals’ Triple-A farm club, the Redbirds — and St. Louis’ Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals optioned McGreevy back to the minors five times last year.
“You laugh about it,” he said. “I just try to have a positive spin on everything.
“It was tough to have news like that, I mean, not making the team out of camp last year … Going up and down.
“I understand the business, so I’m not gonna be a bitter party of one.”
He started this year’s spring training by serving up a home-run ball to Jakob Marsee of the Miami Marlins.
He quickly discovered that the ball he’d thrown had come from the batting-practice bucket.
“The umpire comes up to me, like, ‘Are the balls just slick?’” McGreevy said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, I think we’re using the wrong bucket of balls.
“There are scuffs … These balls are messed up, all of them.”
McGreevy just laughed it off. He allowed just one more hit and no more runs in his two-inning stint.
“He doesn’t seem bothered by a whole lot, and that’s really cool to see out of a young guy,” Marmol said afterward. “It’s not that things don’t bother him, but he stays locked in.
“Everyone is going to experience something throughout the course of the game that throws you off. The skill is to refocus, and he does that really quickly.
“He enjoys competing, simply put.”
The Comeback Kid
Checketts got a reminder of that when he took his Gaucho staff to watch McGreevy pitch at San Diego’s Petco Park last August.
The Cardinals had been reeling with a four-game losing streak while the Padres had won six in a row.
Those trends were going true to form when San Diego scored against McGreevy in each of the first three innings.
Jackson Merrill’s 415-foot home run to dead centerfield saddled him with a 4-0 deficit in the third.
“You’ve got 250 family and friends in the stands,” Checketts recalled. “We were all there, pumped … and by the third inning, you’re like, ‘Oh crap.’
“And then by the seventh, we’re all cheering … He’s winning.”
McGreevy dug deep, giving up only one more hit and no runs the next three innings, to allow the Cardinals to rally for an 8-5 victory.
“From a starting pitcher standpoint, those guys — Shane was like that, too — they can just smell a win,” Checketts said. “They’ve got that one-run lead in the fourth or fifth, and it’s like, ‘It’s over … You’re not getting any more off me.’
“And you saw a lot of that out of Michael when he might’ve had a rough first, get the lead back, and then the foot’s on the gas.”
It’s what he had to do, after all, during all those drives from Memphis to St. Louis.
