Zack “Cy Young” Greinke

Justice has been served.

Too often post-season awards (in all sports) are doled out to the best players on the best teams, regardless of whether those players were actually the best that year in the entirety of the game. This can be due to a false measure of personal success in relation to team success, an over-reliance on the wrong statistics for measuring a player’s performance relative to his peers, or just plain lack of coverage.

For baseball’s Cy Young award, the second situation often comes into play. Historically, wins have been heavily over-weighted in the minds of voters. The fact that a pitcher win total relies mightily on his team’s offense actually generating enough run support to garner the victory is frequently, and sadly, ignored.

Not this year. For Zack Greinke has won this year’s American League Cy Young Award.

Greinke went 16-8 with a stellar 2.16 ERA this year for the lowly Kansas City Royals. 16-8 is a good record, but not usually Cy Young caliber. His 2.16 ERA, however, was the best in all of Major League Baseball.

Put Greinke on all but about five other clubs in 2009–let alone a contender–and his win total would have been much higher. And on a playoff team… who knows?

I attended KC’s game against the Angels May 9th in Anaheim. Greinke gave up a single run in an eight-inning complete game, raising his ERA to a mere 0.51. He pitched absolutely brilliantly, but, because of a lack of offense, lost the game.

Fortunately, this year the voters looked past the number in the win column to the total package, and the right man received the honor.

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