Batter's Box Interactive Magazine - Greinke Wins AL Cy Young

To the surprise of (hopefully) no one, Zack Greinke has won the AL Cy Young.

The only thing mildly surprising is his margin of victory, as Seattle's Felix Hernandez was a pretty distant second. Greinke received 25 of 28 first place votes. Hernandez had 2, and AL strikeout leader Justin Verlander and third-place finisher had the other. C.C. Sabathia and Roy Halladay were the only other pitchers mentioned on the ballot.

Greinke went 16-8, 2.16 for the Royals. He led the league in ERA; his 242 Ks were second to Verlander; his 6 complete games and 3 shutouts were second to Halladay. He was second to Hernandez in hits allowed per 9 innings, and fifth (behind Halladay, Pavano, Blackburn, and Buehrle) in walks per 9 innings.

Posted by Magpie on Tuesday, November 17 2009 @ 06:04 PM EST.

Greinke Wins AL Cy Young | 3 comments | Create New Account

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John Northey - Wednesday, November 18 2009 @ 12:55 PM EST (#208507) #

Always interesting to see the voting and try to guess what influenced it.

Greinke got all but 3 1st place votes with those 3 putting him 2nd to either Felix Hernandez (2-23-1 for 1st/2nd/3rd place - 2 didn't put him on the ballot) or Justin Verlander (1-0-9). 9 people put CC Sabathia on their ballots ahead of Halladay (2 in second the rest in 3rd) while just 11 felt Halladay was one of the top 3 pitchers in the AL this year (all put him 3rd).

Checking the stats we see Greinke/Hernandez/Halladay were 1-2-3 for ERA (all below 2.80) while CC was 4th at 3.37 and Verlander was 6th at 3.45. Wins were a 3 way tie between Verlander, Sabathia, and Hernandez (19 each) with Halladay next at 17 (3 way tie) and then Greinke's 16 (another 3 way tie). WHIP went Greinke/Halladay/Hernandez/Sabathia/Verlander. K's per 9 was led by Verlander with Greinke 3rd, Hernandez 7th, Halladay 8th and Sabathia 9th. For IP it was Verlander/Halladay/Hernandez/Sabathia/Greinke (just 1 1/3 IP between top 3, 10 2/3 from top to bottom). ERA+ had Greinke at 205, Hernandez at 174, Halladay 155, Lester sneaks in at 138, then Verlander at 133 and Sabathia at 127.

No matter how you cut it those were the big 5 this year. It should've been Greinke/Hernandez/Halladay but at least the voters put the right guys at #1 and #2 with Halladay getting more votes but not as good positioning (3rd always rather than a 2nd or 1st place vote) as the two who were promoted more for having 2 more wins than anything else (well, K's also for Verlander).

Chuck - Wednesday, November 18 2009 @ 01:23 PM EST (#208510) #

A Detroit writer explains why he voted for Verlander over Greinke.

A New York writer explains why he voted for Hernandez over Greinke.

Rick Sutcliffe pretends to praise Greinke but really takes the opportunity to praise himself. I find Sutcliffe so unpalatable that I actually opted for Fox's execrable Buck/McCarver tandem over MLB's O'Brien/Sutcliffe pairing during the World Series.

perlhack - Wednesday, November 18 2009 @ 03:38 PM EST (#208515) #

According to this article in the New York Times, Greinke is becoming a sabermetrics geek:

"Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors."

The article also mentions how he changed his pitching based on defensive statistics.

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