Cy Young Award

The Baseball Writers Association of America did the right thing by giving the Cy Young to Zack Greinke. Though not your typical runaway candidate, Greinke did everything right on a team that played so horribly wrong throughout the season. Greinke didn't have an impressive win/loss record, however he certainly made up for it all other categories.

Zack Greinke's win of the 2009 Cy Young Award should be considered one of the best accomplishments in recent baseball history.

The Kansas City Royals weren't a bad team in 2009, they were awful. Greinke's dominance on a 97-loss team speaks to his greatness.

The Royals are in the very competitive but winnable AL Central. Any great team needs an "ace" of the pitching staff to always depend on, but the Royals have almost an entire roster full of holes to fill in order to compete with Minnesota, Detroit, and Chicago.

Perhaps there is hope for the writers who vote for the Major League Baseball awards, after all. Then again, it's always one step forward, two steps back with these guys.

One might hope that the preponderance of advanced statistical evidence might educate voters for awards such as Cy Young, MVP, ROY and the Gold Glove.

After all, as younger and (hopefully) more enlightened writers obtain voting rights, the subjective manner of awarding players should improve.

For the most part, the 2009 MLB Awards Season will be a snoozefest.

I'm a shade unclear as to the specific voting rules for Major League Baseball's regular season awards. Common sense would dictate the writers who select the winners have to wait until the last of the 162 games (including any one-game playoffs that might be necessary) so that they have a complete data set.

If that's the case, the official tallies should begin rolling in once the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers finish up their hostilities on Tuesday.

With the baseball season already two months in, pitchers are starting to really establish themselves as top candidates for the 2009 NL and AL Cy Young award. Here is the updated list of candidates for this prestigious award:

American League

1. Zach Greinke: Kansas City Royals,  8-1, 0.90 ERA, 88 K's

Although the Royals have recently struggled, Greinke has kept pitching beautifully. He gave up three earned runs today to raise his ERA to 0.90. He is still the top candidate for the Cy Young.