The American League Cy Young Award Winners will be announced this afternoon. Much of the drama surrounds the case of Felix Hernandez and whether someone can win with an unimpressive W-L record. The voting, however, promises to be interesting in a number of ways. For instance, I'm not really hearing much buzz about Justin Verlander from the saber community, but there he is, with the second highest WAR in the AL. Second, notably, not to Felix but to Cliff Lee.
As a Royals fan, I'll be watching to see if Zack Greinke gets any down-ballot votes. This year, the Cy Young ballot expanded. In the past, there were only 1-2-3 votes. This year, it's gone to 1-2-3-4-5. In the dying days of the 2010 season I made the case that Zack deserved some 5th place votes.
Basically, Zack, Jon Lester and Jered Weaver are all in the same range: clearly a tick behind the big four at the top of the ballot, clearly actually better than Sabathia. Of course, Jon Lester beat cancer and Jered Weaver beat being a Weaver, so who knows if there will be any juice left for Greinke.