Greinke heading back to Royals

Zack Greinke is returning to where he started his major league career, agreeing to a one-year, $13 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, pending a physical, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

Greinke returns two decades on

The Royals selected Greinke with the sixth overall pick of the 2002 draft and he made his MLB debut for the club two years later. Spending his first seven seasons in Kansas City, Greinke won the 2009 AL Cy Young Award with a league-leading 2.16 ERA and 242 strikeouts in 229 1/3 innings.

Pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2015, he won his second ERA title, recording a 1.66 ERA, and finished second in NL Cy Young voting. The 38-year-old, who has been selected to six All-Star Games and has won six Gold Gloves, has also pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks and spent the last three seasons with the Houston Astros.

In 29 starts and one appearance out of the bullpen last season, the right-hander went 11-6 with a 4.16 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in a team-leading 171 innings. The ERA and WHIP were both his highest since 2016, when he posted a 4.37 ERA and 1.27 WHIP in his first season for Arizona.

He ranks 23rd on the all-time strikeout list with 2,809 and third behind Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander among active pitchers, but his strikeout rate of 6.32 per nine innings last season was his lowest since it was at 5.61 during his second year in the majors in 2005.