You know its a good week when two of Greinke's pitches get specific breakdowns.

Royals:

• Greinke’s Slider | FanGraphs Baseball
• The Curves of Zack Greinke - Beyond the Box Score

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More photos » by Charles Rex Arbogast - AP

Zack Greinke was named the 2009 American League Cy Young Tuesday. The first Royal to win the award since 1994. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Zack Greinke capped a memorable 2009 Tuesday, winning the Cy Young Award, presented annually by the Baseball Writers of America.

Greinke led the Major Leagues with a sterling 2.16 ERA, despite pitching in front of one of the worst defenses in the American League. In August, there seemed to be doubt as to Greinke's viability as a candidate, but a strong finish by the Royal Ace solidified his support. After falling to 11-8 thanks to pitching for the worst team in the league, Greinke went 6-2 over his final eight starts, posting a 1.29 ERA in the process. Greinke led the American League in WHIP.

Greinke's win is especially sweet for Royals fans, who have wholeheartedly embraced Greinke as one of their own. Amidst the wreckage of a lost baseball decade in Kansas City, Greinke, both on the field, and with his down-to-earth nature and sometimes surrealist wit, has been a treasure.

Greinke did not allow a run until his fifth start of the season and gained additional notoriety thanks to a Sports Illustrated cover story detailing his struggles with anxiety off the field and his return to baseball (which actually happened two to three years ago, depending on how you look at it).

Greinke is the first Royal to win the award since David Cone did so in 1994. Brett Saberhagen won the Cy Young twice, claiming the prize in 1985 and 1989. Greinke received 25 of 28 votes.

The Award was strongly pushed by the Royals, who made no secret of their belief that Greinke was the best pitcher in the American League.

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Hopefully this is an accurate preview of the "real" award to come. Greinke claimed the AL CYA from the SB Nation baseball bloggers with little challenge.

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Every season, the baseball team at SB Nation gets together and votes on the same name-brand season awards that the official baseball writers do. We follow the same format and the same points system. Like the BBWAA, votes are due before the postseason.

So who claimed the coveted SB Nation Rookie of the Year title?

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Every season, the baseball team at SB Nation gets together and votes on the same name-brand season awards that the official baseball writers do. We follow the same format -- AL bloggers only vote for the AL Awards, two votes per city, etc. -- and the same points system. Like the BBWAA, votes are due before the postseason.

Today we announce the first set of awards, the AL and NL Managers of the Year. Results after the jump.

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First, my own unsolicited take on this trade.

The news that took eighteen hours or so to emerge was not tremendously good for the Royals. Sending the White Sox $2 million dollars changes the complexion of this trade significantly. Don't get me wrong, it's still a minor deal in the grand scheme of things, but the real benefit to the deal is now much more murkier. The financial savings is murkier, and now, for this trade to work out, either Josh Fields or Chris Getz has to contribute to the Royals during their pre-arb years. Yesterday, there were two clear benefits to the move, now there is only one.

I understand that many of you were frustrated with Teahen's stagnation, but he was basically a generic player. He wasn't great, but he also wasn't part of the problem. (His defensive numbers have been pretty bad the last two seasons, but I consider that more a function of his playing all over the diamond and sample size issues. Which may be too generous.) I understand Dayton's desire to move him, but I also understand Kenny Williams's desire to have him. And in reality, the Royals and White Sox split the difference money-wise, a fitting gesture for such a "meh" trade that neither side really seems too fired up about.

I'm not really sure how to feel about this trade.  Fields' career with the Pale Hose was over, so I'm happy he gets to see a new organization.  I don't like that Getz is gone.  Teahen has been worth .4 WAR combined over the past two seasons and has seen his walk rate drop each year since 2007.  If he can get back to drawing walks like he did in 2006 and 2007, he can be valuable again. -South Side Sox

So now, the stakes, though still small, are raised for Fields and Getz. The Royals could have just let Teahen walk after all, so in effect, they bought the rights to Getz and Fields for two million. Neither player is actually that young, but both are still green in service time years, which does matter. There's a school of thought that suggests these are the best types of guys to have, mid-to-late twenties guys who are still cheap, while there's another school of thought that might argue that this is yet another non-rebuilding move from Moore. Personally, I know myself well enough to admit that if the Royals had gotten back some as-yet-unknown barely legal rookie ball prospect, I'd probably have been more excited.

In this case, we'll just have to... wait for it... trust the process, trust the scouting. Apparently Getz is the key to the deal for the Royals, with Fields being just another low OBP slugger with no glove (also another Born Again) who may or may not be a part of anything. I don't know. The curious thing is that at the very least the Getz trade should set in motion either a reconfiguration of the infield or another trade, or two. We'll just have to wait and see.

Pointlessly premature verdict: Cash to Chicago pushes this from a slightly interesting quasi-prospect grab to a mostly innocuous head-scratcher, for now.

A massive roundup of links about the trade and other matters after the jump:

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The Mark Teahen Era, one marked by so many trade rumors and so much uncertainty about Teahen's role on the team at any given moment, may be heading towards a fitting end: nobody seems to know what is going on.

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Saw it on MLBTraderumors from this link to NY Daily News

• The Royals shed Teahen's probable ~$3-4 million-ish salary. Getz & Fields are both league minimum guys.
  
• Presumably Fields will compete for the DH job. He really shouldn't be in the field. Then again, would a Fields at 3rd, Gordon at 1st, scenario stun you?
  
• Not immediately sure what to make of Getz. His (small sample) defensive numbers aren't good. Maybe he's a depth guy, maybe they have a plan to use him. Too early to say. I know that he wasn't popular in the White Sox clubhouse after making some seemingly innocuous statements about the younger players on the team energizing the club.