Diamondbacks’ Zack Greinke reports to Spring Training

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zack Greinke reported to Spring Training on Friday, according to multiple reports, including that of MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert.

His arrival comes two days after the first workout for all other pitchers and catchers on Wednesday.

“It was good to see [Zack] and I told him that,” manager Torey Lovullo said on Friday. “It’s good to know that he’s around. It’s good to see him and his smiling face and just to know that he’s in the next room.

“He said that he’s excited and ready to go.”

It became publicly known on Wednesday that Greinke would not be with his teammates for the start of workouts, but that his absence was not injury-related and that he would report later in the week.

“It doesn’t come as a surprise to me, he was very proactive about it,” Lovullo said on Wednesday. “He reached out to me to let me know — he asked for a couple extra days, which I gave him. There’s a couple reasons, a couple thoughts that went into that for me.

“He knows what he needs to do to get ready for the start of the season, he’s done it for a long time, he’s been working out, hitting all of his landmarks, he threw a 40-pitch bullpen last week. So I just felt comfortable in saying, ‘OK, if this is something that you need, I’m OK with it.’ The one part of it I want to make sure everybody understands is he’s not injured. This was something that he gave me a long heads-up about.”

In an interview with 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station on Thursday, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen addressed Greinke’s absence, saying it wasn’t something to worry about.

“There’s sort of those unwritten and written rules,” Hazen said. “First of all, it’s between Torey and Zack. I think there’s a level of respect you grant players who have done what Zack has done in the game. I think there’s looking at probably one of our most, if not our most, prepared player on a year-to-year, day-to-day, start-to-start basis.

“There’s probably a little bit of wiggle room there,” the GM added. “If Zack needs a couple extra days — we’ve seen him all offseason, we’ve seen him throw ‘pens already. We’ve seen what kind of shape he’s in.”

This isn’t the first time Greinke has been slow to get geared up during spring. In 2017, before his second season with Arizona, he didn’t debut in a spring game until March 3. Last year, he first appeared on Feb. 25.

The D-backs’ first spring training game is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 23 at Salt River Fields.

The team’s first full-squad workout will take place on Monday.

Follow @mattjlayman