A pitch for Greinke's Cy Young candidacy

Editor's note: This story by Yahoo! Sports national baseball columnist Jeff Passan advocating Zack Greinke for the A.L. Cy Young Award originally ran Sept. 17, 2009. Greinke won the award Nov. 17.

He is going to get shafted.

It has nothing to do with coastal bias or cover jinxes or a last name that breaks the long-held i-before-e-except-after-c rule. Zack Greinke(notes) may well not capture the American League Cy Young award this year because he plays for the Kansas City Royals, a team larded with more dung than a pigpen, and the Royals do not know how to win games when Greinke pitches.

This is not some reverse-psychology trick meant to will the Baseball Writers Association of America into stumping for Greinke. It is resignation taken to bandwidth. And a hope, the tiniest sliver, that past sins of voting stupidity will fade as a more enlightened group takes subjective and objective knowledge and blends them in the fashion of the best teams.

Greinke has 13 victories. Ugly, yes. He also has an earned-run average twice as good as his league's. Really. Fourteen pitchers have done that since baseball started handing out the Cy Young in 1956, and this is supposed to be the part where it says all 14 won the award – only that's not true because of said voters.

Four didn't. Four pitchers posted historically good seasons and somehow wound up second or third. And it's any wonder there's skepticism.

In 1990, Roger Clemens(notes) ended the year with an ERA a full run lower than the winner's. He threw five more complete games, two more shutouts, had 82 more strikeouts, 23 fewer walks and 19 fewer home runs. And because Bob Welch won 27 games, six more than Clemens, the vote wasn't close.

It happened to Clemens again in 2005, his 13 victories and 1.87 ERA overwhelmed by Chris Carpenter's(notes) 21 wins and Dontrelle Willis'(notes) 22, and in between to Kevin Brown (1996 runner-up to John Smoltz's(notes) 24 wins) and Pedro Martinez(notes) (2003, behind 22-win Roy Halladay(notes) and 21-win Esteban Loaiza(notes)).

There is history. A pattern. Baseball writers value victories. The object of the game, of course, is to win. Thus, a pitcher with many is the ideal sort. Even if his ERA is twice Greinke's. (Hello, Derek Lowe(notes).)

Now, come on. The voters would never vote for someone with an ERA worse than league average like Lowe's. Just 11 percent better (like Jim Lonborg's in 1967) or 14 percent (Pete Vuckovich, '82) or 15 percent (LaMarr Hoyt, '84). In 2005, when Bartolo Colon(notes) beat out Mariano Rivera(notes) and Johan Santana(notes), he did so with an ERA that looked more like the LBS when he steps on a scale: 3.48.

So what good, then, is Greinke's 2.19 ERA entering Thursday's start, his adjusted ERA of 200 (100 is park-factored average), his league-leading three shutouts and an opponents' on-base percentage of .274? Why bother detailing the most spectacular run to begin a season since Fernando Valenzuela and an almost equally impressive – if not publicized – final month? Greinke could invent a new pitch, call it the snarfball – don't put anything past him – strike out everyone he faces and still remain buried amid the irrelevance of his team.

Only the most attentive voters know that Greinke's ERA over the last month is 1.37, the best in baseball among starters. As are his innings pitched and strikeouts. He is a 96-mph-throwing, vicious-slider-unleashing bottle of baseball moonshine, hard to swallow and even worse to stomach.

Toughest of all is that he will lose votes because of his wretched team. There is no way to summarize the Royals' season in any less than 4,601 words, so two numbers will suffice: 101 runs in 29 starts. That is what the Royals have given the 25-year-old Greinke this year. His run support is dead last in baseball. Were he a middle-of-the-pack pitcher, he would have 20 victories.

Greinke is the only pitcher in baseball to twice go seven or more innings, give up one or fewer runs and get saddled with a loss. Four other times he's done the same and been fed a no-decision – the past two starts in particular, either of which would have looked nice as a victory tacked onto a 13-8 record that out of context screams underwhelming.

The BBWAA isn't an organization that historically engages in nuanced decision-making. The group is overwhelmingly white and embarrassingly male. If Greinke has anything going for him, it's that the writers are younger, too, and likelier to have embraced the idea that while victories are an indicator for a starting pitcher, they are not the lone statistic on which Cy Young votes must be placed.

Which leaves Greinke sweating. CC Sabathia(notes) has 17 wins and plays in New York. Justin Verlander(notes) has 16 and leads the AL in strikeouts. Both are going to the playoffs. Neither, incidentally, has an ERA within a full run of Greinke's, and he can only hope they stumble before hitting the magic No. 20 and he drums up enough run support in his final four starts to steal three victories.

Because 16 is the cutoff. Rick Sutcliffe won the NL Cy Young with 16 victories when he was traded to the Cubs at midseason in 1984, and Greg Maddux(notes) and David Cone did so in the strike-shortened 1994 season. A dozen years later, Brandon Webb(notes) won the first full-year, 16-win Cy Young. It came with a caveat, of course: Webb's 16 tied for the National League lead with five others.

Greinke is tied for eighth. His truest competitor is Seattle's Felix Hernandez(notes). Then there's Verlander, Sabathia, Roy Halladay, Scott Feldman(notes), Jon Lester(notes), Mariano Rivera. Because it's so wide open, the vote is something of a crapshoot, and to assume anything – particularly that Greinke should win – is the domain of the fool.

Even if it is obvious.

AL Cy Young predictions

Gordon Edes
	1	Zack Greinke	Royals	Overcomes handicap of pitching for KC.
	2	CC Sabathia	Yankees	Great second half, 20 wins could mean a trophy.
	3	Justin Verlander	Tigers	Strikeouts give him edge over Felix Hernandez.
	1	Zack Greinke	Royals	Look at the numbers, not the record.
	2	Felix Hernandez	Mariners	Quietly dominant – Greinke Lite.
	3	Mariano Rivera	Yankees	So, what was that about slowing down?
	1	Zack Greinke	Royals	A pitcher-franchise relationship reminiscent of Seaver-Mets, Carlton-Phils.
	2	Felix Hernandez	Mariners	The throwin' of King Felix bears a breakout season.
	3	Roy Halladay	Blue Jays	Stumbled by his standards in August. His standards are different.
	1	Zack Greinke	Royals	Tremendous breakout year in key stat categories.
	2	CC Sabathia	Yankees	Handled NY pressure well – in regular season, anyway.
	3	Justin Verlander	Tigers	Excellent bounceback to legit ace status with playoff team.