By Thom Henninger
Sixteen wins may not sound like a ticket to Cy Young honors, but the baseball writers got it right when they gave Kansas City ace Zack Greinke the American League award.
The 26-year-old right-hander was 16-8 for the last-place Royals, who lost 97 games and shared the AL Central cellar with Cleveland. Greinke also posted a major league-leading 2.16 ERA, despite pitching in a home park that was the majors’ fifth most-friendly venue for runs scored in 2009, according to park factors at ESPN.com.
Greinke finished second in the AL, third in the majors, with 242 strikeouts, trailing only Detroit’s Justin Verlander (269) and San Francisco’s Tim Lincecum (261). Neither league leader, however, could match Greinke’s 4.75 strikeout-walk ratio. The Royals ace walked only 51 batters in 229.1 innings, and among ERA qualifiers, he finished fourth in strikeout-walk ratio behind only Toronto’s Roy Halladay (5.94), Dan Haren of the Diamondbacks (5.87) and Atlanta’s Javier Vazquez (5.41).
As for those 16 victories, Greinke easily could have been a 20-game winner with a little more run support. In eight of his 33 starts, he allowed two or fewer runs but finished with a loss or a no-decision. Greinke gave up a total of eight runs in those eight outings, but was 0-2 with a 1.29 ERA in them.
In fact, among all ERA qualifiers in the AL, Greinke ranked fourth for the lowest run support per nine innings.
Lowest Run Support per 9 IP among AL Pitchers, 2009
(ERA qualifiers only)
| Matt Garza, TB | 3.68 |
| Jarrod Washburn, Sea-Det | 3.94 |
| Edwin Jackson, Det | 4.04 |
| Zack Greinke, KC | 4.20 |
| James Shields, TB | 4.42 |
| Mark Buehrle, CWS | 4.43 |
Greinke easily won the Cy Young vote over the runnerup, Seattle’s Felix Hernandez. The 23-year-old right-hander was 19-5 with a 2.49 ERA that was second in the league only to Greinke’s mark. Hernandez posted his impressive ERA based out of Safeco Field, which ESPN.com ranked in the lower third of all major league parks for runs scored.
Like Greinke, Hernandez also didn’t get the support that most of his AL peers received. The Mariners ace was ninth in the league for lowest run support, as he was given an average of 4.71 runs per nine innings, roughly a half-run more per nine than Greinke.
The hitting percentages allowed by Hernandez were ever so slightly lower than Greinke’s, but it was a matter of just a few hits. They finished 1-2 among their AL peers in both opponent batting and slugging, with Greinke posting the lowest opponent OBP in the league.
Greinke received 25 first-place votes from the writers to prevail over the league’s three 19-game winners. Hernandez garnered two first-place tallies, and Verlander, who was 19-9 (3.45) and finished a distant third in the balloting, had one. Yankees ace CC Sabathia, at 19-8 (3.37), was fourth in the vote.
