Zack Greinke: A Look Back at His 2009 Cy Young Season

As you might have heard, we have a brand new Cy Young award winner that happens to pitch for the Kansas City Royals. His name is none other than Zack Greinke.

Greinke won the award last week after turning on one of the best pitching seasons that Royals fans have seen since the days of Brett Saberhagen and David Cone. With the award, he became just the third K.C. pitcher to win the prestigious award. The other two of course, being the aforementioned Saberhagen and Cone.

Now, let's talk about Mr. Greinke's season for a minute. Greinke posted the lowest ERA by a starting AL pitcher since Pedro Martinez's breakout season in 2000, which saw him post a microscopic 1.74 ERA.

Zack continuously mowed down batter after batter at times, and seemingly looked pretty close to un-hitable. He did this by starting off the season strong, and finishing the season strong as well. His only low point of the season was during the middle of the year, which saw him struggle from time to time, but he didn't let this minor setback get him down.

He ended up completing arguably the best season ever for a Kansas City starting pitcher. Greinke also came up just short of the Royals single season strikeout record for a pitcher of 244, as he finished with 242 for the year.

One stat in particular that many people have over-valued when looking at Greinke's season has been his win-loss record of 16-8. Yes, that is one of the lowest winning percentages and lowest amount of wins that a pitcher has compiled and still was able to win the all-important Cy Young award.

However, let's take a look at the team behind Greinke during each game. They were one of the worst defensive teams in all of baseball. And if that wasn't bad enough, they struggled offensively throughout the entire season, whether it was getting runners on base, or driving those runners in once they were out there.

I mean, you know that the offense struggled when not one batter was able to reach 100 RBI for the season and only two managed to hit above .300 for year.

These alarming stats and thoughts had to be going through the back of Zach's mind each and every time he took the mound every fifth game.

This didn't phase Zack. He still turned in one of the best seasons ever by a pitcher in recent memory, and was a well-deserving Cy Young Award winner because of it.

Now, let's see if he can provide an encore in 2010. Stay tuned.