Who *Doesn't* Win the NL Cy Young?

If you were Dr. Frankenhurler and conspired to design the next Cy Young winner you would assemble a creature who could eat innings, keep the ball in the park, miss bats, carve up the strike zone, suppress plate crossings and stand tallest when the pressure mounted.

Your monster would be named Jake Arrieta.

I mean Zack Greinke.

Oh Lord. We only have room for one of them. And we haven't even mentioned Clayton Kershaw.

It looks this year like Dr. Frankenhurler used the same template twice. One of these guys is Cy Winner 1.0 and the other 1.1.

Arrieta (22-6, 1.77) and Greinke (19-3, 1.66) both posted cartoon numbers with laser command and a cornucopia of offerings. Each topped 220 innings. Each fanned at least 200 and walked fewer than 50. Both benefited from defense and luck about equally; both are freakish specimens even without serendipity's side effects.

Each spells his first name with four letters and his last with seven, including three vowels. Freaky similar.

Their "Deserved Run Average," a complicated computation that accounts for everything the geeks can think of and weighs most heavily the components of good pitching rather than the results, favors Greinke, 2.17 - 2.31.

That's the difference of one run every 63 innings.

The trajectory of the two pitchers' years provide the greatest contrast: Greinke the model of consistency, Arrieta the charging bull. By now you've heard that Arrieta allowed four runs after the All-Star break. (That includes one complete game play-in, which doesn't count in the voting.) Batters hit .136 and slugged .172 against him in August and September, because he allowed two doubles, a triple and a homer. In two months of work.

Greinke is defined by his worst month, August, during which he went 4-1, 2.45, allowed a .325 SLG and whiffed six times as many batters as he walked. That was the bad month.

Cy Young voters will be swayed by which shiny object most appeals to them, the big kick or the steady speed. The overall numbers tilt ever so slightly to the Dodger, as if the inventor made one small tweak in the form between creations. But one of these guys won't win the award, and we'll shake our heads and wonder what more the good tinkerer could have done.

Loser

An American League pitcher with a Cy Young pedigree is at it again. In 47 innings so far this year, he's largely baffled the opposition, yielding just 41 hits and eight walks, while fanning 36. He sports a gleaming 2.51 ERA despite a Triple-A bullpen and an energetic but flailing defense. He's thrown a complete game and six quality starts in seven tries.

An early Cy Young contender, wouldn't you say?

Contrast him with this guy: 30 games and seven starting assignments into the season he still hasn't managed to win a game. What good is this guy to his team?

I think you already know the punchline: it's the same pitcher. Zack Greinke has the dubious distinction of toiling for the Kansas City Royals, a Pittsburgh Pirates AL doppelganger. He's been brilliant, but his team remains -- after two decades of futility -- a collection of retreads and misfits. The offense has tallied 17 times in his seven starts, most of the runs coming long after he'd left the game and the relief corps had provided relief -- for opposing pitchers.

The game against the Blue Jays on April 21 is a good case in point. Grienke left the contest with a 3-2 lead after seven strong innings, fanning 8 and allowing just a walk and two hits to the league's fourth best (as of today) offense. It took two relievers to subdue Toronto in the eighth, relinquishing the lead in the process. KC won that game in the 10th -- the only Grienke start in which they prevailed. Certainly you can't argue that Greinke "failed to pitch to the score" or "wasn't clutch" or some other cliche nonsense.

Last year, there was some talk in the sports blather community that Greinke lacked the requisite number of wins to earn the Cy Young award. Fortunately, the Royals managed to claim a couple of W's behind him at season's end and the writers overwhelmingly voted for him. Still, it's inconceivable that they could anoint a below-.500 pitcher the best in the league even if he is by any relevant measure. That would require a rise to greatness -- on the writers' part -- that is six or seven steps beyond where they stand as a group right now.

Nonetheless, Greinke's early performance and record show how a great pitcher performing at the highest level can own a bad record. And there's just nothing about it that's his fault.

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What Was Mussolini's Lifetime ERA?

What do these questions have in common:

What is the municipal budget of Lake Wobegon?
Who killed Paul McCartney?
What did Pee Wee Herman know and when did he know it?
How much is the square root of your grandmother?
Does Zack Grienke have enough wins to deserve the American League Cy Y0ung award?

The answer: they're irrelevant.

Greinke has been the best pitcher in the AL this year by the length of Curt Schilling's ego. Pitching in front of the retread defense of the Kansas City Royals, Greinke has thrown 210 innings of a 2.52 RA, better by a half run than anyone else. He's second in the circuit with 224 strikeouts and second in K/BB ratio with a mere 44 free passes. His austerity with long balls -- just 11 -- is by far the standard in the AL, as is his WHIP of 1.06. (Home runs are relatively hard to come by in Kauffman Stadium, Greinke's home park, but it's densely populated with doubles and triples. The park effect explains a nominal percentage of his superiority.)

The statheads say that Felix Hernandez's superb performance this year has saved the Mariners 68 runs compared to an average fifth starter. Roy Halladay has saved the Jays 59 runs. CC Sabathia's been worth 56. Justin Verlander, 54. Impressive, all.

Greinke: 80 runs. Attention those of you mistrusted with the vote for this award: 80 is a lot more than 68. It's a lot more than 59 and a lot more than 56 or 54.

It's also a whole lotta more than 26. That's Mariano Rivera's savings. Now, Rivera is theoretically saving runs with the game hanging in the balance, though it's debatable how true that is with a three-run lead in the 9th. Nonetheless, that's such a mammoth difference as to repudiate any vote for him over Greinke.

In short, there's really no credible argument for anyone else. But some sportswriters will demur based on Greinke's low win total. Greinke's 14-8 record pales compared to Sabatha's (17-7), Hernandez's (16-5), Verlander's (16-8) and even Jered Weaver's (15-6, with an ERA over four). Here's the problem with this argument: it's got nothing to do with anything.

That Zack's team can't figure out a way to win after he shuts down the opposition on two runs over seven frames isn't his problem. He's not responsible for the ineptitude of the relievers who follow him or the emptiness of the batting order behind him. Conversely, CC Sabathia deserves no credit for a 6-5 lead provided by Murderers' Row and clamped shut by Rivera.

The Cy Young rewards a simple proposition: the best pitcher in the league that year. The only credible answer in the AL this year is Zack Grienke. Anyone who votes otherwise should have his voting privilege revoked.
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