Who *Doesn't* Win the NL Cy Young?

If you were Dr. Frankenhurler and conspired to design the next Cy Young winner you would assemble a creature who could eat innings, keep the ball in the park, miss bats, carve up the strike zone, suppress plate crossings and stand tallest when the pressure mounted.

Your monster would be named Jake Arrieta.

I mean Zack Greinke.

Oh Lord. We only have room for one of them. And we haven't even mentioned Clayton Kershaw.

It looks this year like Dr. Frankenhurler used the same template twice. One of these guys is Cy Winner 1.0 and the other 1.1.

Arrieta (22-6, 1.77) and Greinke (19-3, 1.66) both posted cartoon numbers with laser command and a cornucopia of offerings. Each topped 220 innings. Each fanned at least 200 and walked fewer than 50. Both benefited from defense and luck about equally; both are freakish specimens even without serendipity's side effects.

Each spells his first name with four letters and his last with seven, including three vowels. Freaky similar.

Their "Deserved Run Average," a complicated computation that accounts for everything the geeks can think of and weighs most heavily the components of good pitching rather than the results, favors Greinke, 2.17 - 2.31.

That's the difference of one run every 63 innings.

The trajectory of the two pitchers' years provide the greatest contrast: Greinke the model of consistency, Arrieta the charging bull. By now you've heard that Arrieta allowed four runs after the All-Star break. (That includes one complete game play-in, which doesn't count in the voting.) Batters hit .136 and slugged .172 against him in August and September, because he allowed two doubles, a triple and a homer. In two months of work.

Greinke is defined by his worst month, August, during which he went 4-1, 2.45, allowed a .325 SLG and whiffed six times as many batters as he walked. That was the bad month.

Cy Young voters will be swayed by which shiny object most appeals to them, the big kick or the steady speed. The overall numbers tilt ever so slightly to the Dodger, as if the inventor made one small tweak in the form between creations. But one of these guys won't win the award, and we'll shake our heads and wonder what more the good tinkerer could have done.