Greinke wins in a landslide

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Around here, among Royals fans in Kansas City, there's been a persistent buzz about whether Zack Greinke would win the Cy Young Award as the American League's best pitcher.

Out there, in Zack Greinke's offseason in Orlando, Fla., not so much.

"Not really," he says. "I've been playing this 'World of Warcraft' game."

The quote is classic Greinke — honest, surprising, funny — and probably as good a way as any for him to mark a day on a national stage. Greinke took 25 of the 28 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers Association of America, a blowout win over runner-up Felix Hernandez that was the AL award's biggest margin since Johan Santana's unanimous selection in 2006.

The award triggers a $100,000 bonus that, if nothing else, becomes a nice gift as he prepares to be married on Saturday.

Greinke's story is well-documented here, of course, about how he debuted as a 20-year-old in 2004 and won the Royals' pitcher of the year award, but led the league in losses the next year and walked away from baseball in 2006, when he was diagnosed with social anxiety and depression.

Greinke returned to Double-A Wichita that summer, and pitched mostly out of the bullpen in 2007 with the Royals before a full season as a starter in 2008. Then came this year's breakout: 16-8 with a 2.16 ERA and 242 strikeouts and just 51 walks in 229 1/3 innings.

That ERA was more than a third of a run better than any other AL starter, and the lowest in the league since Pedro Martinez in 2000. Advanced metrics loved Greinke just as much, with FanGraphs.com rating both his fastball and slider as the best among any starter in the league.

The award makes Greinke perhaps the highest-profile athlete to overcome social anxiety and depression, in some ways turning him from feel-good story to role model for an untold number of athletes who suffer from similar illnesses.

"I think what doesn't get talked about enough, whether he went back and pitched in the big leagues again or not, is how he dealt with these issues as a young man," Red Sox assistant Allard Baird, the former Royals general manager who drafted Greinke, told the Boston Herald. "He had to go through this private matter publicly, he had to open himself up. Just in life, in everyday living, to take some very private and personal issues that he had at a young age and work through it in the public eye is all to his credit."

Not that Greinke is interested much in being a symbol.

"The problem is I really don't like having a bunch of attention," he says. "So even if I did see myself in that light, I don't do anything about it to help out and make people aware and stuff. Even if I was looked at that way, and knew I was being looked at that way, I don't do anything about it, because I'm real uncomfortable being around people and doing stuff like that."

Greinke's award, though, and the phenomenal season it recognizes, changes how he's viewed — by others and himself.

Greinke is famously honest in his self-analysis. After a bad start in Toronto, for instance, he said he watched the Blue Jays struggle and didn't take them seriously. And so when the questions about what keyed his breakout poured in after Tuesday's announcement, it's interesting that he never settled on a consistent answer.

He talked about an improved curveball, teammates who supported him, a comfort with catcher Miguel Olivo, confidence from a historically dominant April, and a pitch-to-pitch focus that rarely wavered.

It could have been any of those things. Or all of them. Or something completely different.

"I really don't know how it happened," he said.

But it has, and whether he's entirely comfortable with it or not — and he's not — he is no longer just Zack Greinke but instead Cy Young winner Zack Greinke.

Greinke has never craved the spotlight, even as his talent demanded the baseball world's attention. It's a fascinating internal dichotomy, with his life's focus earning the highest of honors while forcing the attention that his personality despises.

"It's still what I work for, and will try to work for again next year," he says. "For me, there is some negative to it. It's definitely worth more positive than negative."

Greinke's success will also be enjoyed by athletes who are currently dealing with the same issues Greinke overcame. This past season, Dontrelle Willis and Khalil Greene were among a growing trend of ballplayers whose battles with similar problems became public.

Tom Ferraro is a New York-based psychiatrist who estimates as much as 15 to 20 percent of professional athletes deal with these problems, and says Greinke's emergence will serve as a much-welcomed example of how to cope.

"It gives hope to those who suffer," Ferraro says. "It's an under-treated phenomena. My office is filled with young men who are 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds and look like physical specimens, but they need help."

Greinke's trouble surfaced in spring training 2006. He told his manager and general manager he'd been miserable for two years. He wanted to get away. First, though, he was pitching to John Buck in a side session, and found himself throwing as hard as he could, over and over, the rage spilling out into each pitch.

He left the team and told his family he was done with baseball. He wondered whether he'd rather mow lawns. A doctor diagnosed social anxiety and depression, and once he started with some medication, he started feeling better.

Eventually, he returned to the Royals' minor-league affiliate in Wichita and finally started enjoying baseball again. In fact, he liked it so much he once said he'd rather pitch for a winner in Wichita than a loser in Kansas City.

The Royals called him up at the end of 2006 and put him in the bullpen. He liked the idea of possibly pitching every day, and in the most important situations. He was also throwing harder, his fastball up from 92 mph to 98, and his pitches had more movement.

He moved into the rotation in August 2007, and kept the velocity while maintaining control. He was good enough toward the end of 2008 that Boston executive Bill James called one of Greinke's starts the best he'd seen the entire season.

All of that set up this remarkable season, when Greinke was not just the best pitcher in the American League, but the best in years. With the fuel of such a compelling personal story, Greinke's stardom went national.

"It's an uphill battle from where I was at," he says. "I've worked my whole life to do good and stuff in baseball... then pitching I was doing good, good, good, then you hit a rough spot and you get sent back to the bottom so fast."

Greinke spent his first night as a Cy Young winner at dinner, a previously planned get-together between his family and his fiancee's family. The wedding is Saturday, and after that it's three weeks in Hawaii — on three different islands.

He won't take his cell phone, and is trying to talk his fiancee into doing the same. He wants to completely get away from baseball, at least for a bit.

Greinke has been active the last two months, but in a way he describes as "more fun" and less disciplined — ignoring the usually boring but baseball-important workouts for his abs, shoulders and back, for instance.

But maybe, at some point in the next month or so, even as he gets away from baseball, he will think about how far the game has brought him.

It's been a remarkable journey so far, and with Greinke just turning 26 last month, in some ways it's only beginning.

"You realize you can't take anything for granted," he says. "You have to be 100 percent ready for everything. It definitely wasn't easy getting back to doing good, but I don't know, it's kind of a challenge and it's nice when you get to the top.

"Once you get there, it's tough to stay there, too. So that's a tough challenge that's coming, too."

This story was originally published November 18, 2009 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Greinke wins in a landslide."