Greatness Displayed in Greinke

In 2006, Zack Greinke withdrew from baseball for a couple of months. The 22-year-old found himself haunted by depression and anxiety issues.

Just over three years after walking away from the game for his well-being, Zack Greinke walked his way to the most prestigious honor for a Major League pitcher.

When the Baseball Writers of America voted on the American League Cy Young Award today, Greinke took an astounding 25 of 28 first-place votes.

His season-long dominance of opposing hitters earned him his first Cy Young of his young career.

The 26-year-old righty separated himself from the rest of the pack with a phenomenal season from his first outing of the season.

He tallied 16 wins on the season, included five in the season's first month. In April, Greinke won his first five starts while posting a .50 ERA and throwing two complete games with one shut-out. He did not allow a run until the fifth inning of his fourth start, a streak of 24 innings without a run allowed.

While playing for a team that won just 65 games, Greinke performed without an offense like the Yankees loaded line-up. The Royals averaged only 1.9 runs in his eight losses, just 15 total runs.

With such a little margin for error, Greinke led all of Major League Baseball with a 2.16 ERA, the best since Roger Clemens finished the 2005 season with an ERA of 1.87.

For the season, he struck out 242 batters against just 51 walks. Over the season’s first two months, Greinke racked up 88 strikeouts and walked just 12 in 82.0 innings.

With such a performance out of the gate, Greinke captured the attention of the baseball world immediately.

Greinke grabbed the Royals attention as a high school phenom and the franchise picked him sixth in the 2002 MLB draft. Right away he began a meteoric rise through the Royals farm system.

In his one full minor league season, he went 11-1 with a 1.14 ERA for Wilmington, the Royal's Class A Advanced minor league affiliate.

At the age of 20, Greinke received the call to the big leagues by the Royals in May of 2004.

Success did not come quickly by any means, as Greinke struggled over his first few years with a record of 36-45. In 2005, he went 5-17 with a 5.80 ERA and the losing took its toll.

In Spring Training before the 2006 season, Greinke left the Royals, and baseball, for a couple of months because of issues with depression and anxiety. His struggles mentally caused management concerns and he took a leave for personal matters to sort out some of the problems at hand.

After returning to the team, Greinke spent the majority of the 2006 campaign at Double-A Witchita before returning to the Royals later in the season. He threw in just three major-league games in 2006, all in relief roles.

Starting the year back in the rotation, Greinke went 1-2 in the month of April with a 3.51 ERA before being shelled in two consecutive games by the Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers.

The Royals bumped him back to the bullpen, then returning him to a starting role in September. Opening the 2008 season, Greinke won his first three starts, surrendering just two runs in his first three games over 24 innings. The third, a complete game five-hit shut-out in Seattle, sealed his position at the top of the Royals rotation.

Likely no one could have predicted the success of the 2009 season for Greinke. His mind-blowing statistics reflect what the Royals saw in him when they selected him with their first pick of the 2002 Draft.

Greinke receiving baseball’s highest honor for a pitcher today, after walking away from baseball to clear his head of anxieties, is a testament to more than the pitcher Zack Greinke.

The man Zack Greinke won more than an award today. Zack Greinke as a man proved what man can do in overcoming difficulty: triumph.