I was reading some stories this morning and came across this one on Fire Brand of the AL. The post is a defense of Jon Lester for the Cy Young, but while Lester is having an unbeliveable season, I have to disagree.

Zack Greinke has performed well enough to make 2009 one of the better seasons not only this year, but of the last 8 seasons. I could go further, but am basing much of my argument on WAR, which only goes to 2002 on FanGraphs.

In the Fire Brand article, the argument is based on four stats where Jon Lester ranks in the AL Top 5: ERA, K/9(Strikeouts), Wins and IP. Wins and to a degree, Innings Pitched, should have little to do with the voting(but sadly do not) and Greinke beats Lester or ties him in all four.

In addition, I was curious if this is the right attitude to take about Cy Young voting:

If the local media were to get behind their hometown hero

Should we expect our local writers to support a player they know is not the Cy Young because he is the local pitcher? Shouldn't the award go to the most deserving pitcher, not the pitcher that has a media trumpeting advantage?

What I really want to emphasize is how spectacular and special Greinke's 2009 season has been. Although we accept ERA as flawed due to BABIP and defensive fluctuations, we should still admire that Zach's ERA is currently ranked 320th all time; it's the best mark since Roger Clemens cruised to an almost inhuman 1.87 during his 2005 campaign as an Astro.

Another interesting milestone by Greinke has been his total of 200 IP, a 200 ERA+* and 200 K's. You can read more here at Joe Posnaski's Blog about how rare that is. His ERA+ stands at 210 right now, which ranks 27th all time.

* ERA+ is a grade of a pitcher's ERA in comparison to the league's average in a specific year. ERA+ lets us then easily compares a 3.00 ERA in 2007 to a 3.00 ERA in 1982. We all know that the dead ball era, the 60s, and the steroid era dramatically changed baseball's landscape. A quick example? Bob Gibson's insane 1968 season with a 1.12 ERA? His ERA+ was a 256. Pedro Martinez' 2000 campaign, considered by some the greatest single season pitching performance in history, achieved a 292 ERA+, while having an ERA of 1.79. The fact Pedro put up a 1.79 ERA during the height of steroid use in the majors is just astounding.

If we consider how Greinke's Wins Above Replacement stack up in time, his stock looks even better. He currently has a WAR of 8.6 with another 2 possible starts left to increase that value even more. Since 2002, only 2 pitchers have achieved superior values in WAR. Randy Johnson did it in 2002 and 2004 and Curt Schilling did it in 2002. In addition, for his career, Roger Clemens only beat 8.6 twice according to BaseballProjection.

Greinke's season is one of the all-time great performances in recent history. My only question left for Greinke is not whether he should win the Cy Young, but is he also our first real MVP candidate since Pedro was robbed of the award in 2000?

Joe Mauer is the leading contender in the AL with a 7.7 WAR, but that does not include fielding(FanGraphs does not have an established metric for catching defense). For now, we can assume that Mauer's 98 games at catcher equated to 1 WAR value, and put the two players effectively in a dead heat.

This is the debate we should be having right now, as Greinke and Mauer are easily the two best players in the American League.

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