Careless tweet by Pedro Gomez set up Zack Greinke to look like a jackass

The Astros didn’t fade out last night, which is what most of the baseball world wanted. A word on Zack Greinke, who gutted out six innings when his team needed it most after what has been a rocky postseason for him.

On Tuesday, ESPN’s Pedro Gomez tweeted out some quotes from Greinke about how he preferred games without fans.

It’s hard to know if Gomez was merely sharing, trying to provide some levity by showing a different point of view, or trying to hang Greinke out to dry. The latter is unlikely, as Gomez isn’t the type. But what it does ignore is that Greinke has struggled with social anxiety his entire career and life, to the point where he even had to take a break from pitching during his time in Kansas City.

It’s unfair to just present Greinke’s quotes without that context. Dealing with strangers, the autographs and the requests and the rest, is by far the part of the job Greinke finds the toughest, at times impossible. It’s not just an annoyance to him, but a factor that can be crippling.

To simply show those quotes and leave it to simple chance that Greinke will be seen as some sort of ungrateful athlete who doesn’t appreciate the reasons he is compensated so well is not telling anywhere near the whole story, and these days you can’t trust anyone on Twitter to actually do the research. Most at ESPN wouldn’t know any better, but Gomez should.