Three years ago it was uncertain exactly where Kansas City Royals' pitcher Zach Greinke would be. The righty had been diagnosed with depression and social anxiety.

In fact, the assessment eventually led Greinke to quit baseball, altogether.

He returned to the Royals, however, after six weeks off.

It would be another few years until the baseball world would become privy to the hurler's mettle. This past season, Greinke, while still pitching for the cellar-dweller that is KC, had a year unlike any we've seen in quite some time. And not for the reasons one would think.

He turned in a 16-8 record with a Greg Maddux-like 2.16 earned run average (best in the Bigs). In fact, it was the lowest since Pedro Martinez registered a 1.74 ERA for the 2000 Red Sox.

The 26-year-old racked up 242 strikeouts, good for third-best in the majors only to Detroit's Justin Verlander (269) and San Francisco's Tim Lincecum (261).

All this while pitching for a team for which run production was a myth ... as it's been for some time.

When Greinke was on the mound, the Royals struggled mightily to put runs on the board. KC scored a dismal 4.83 runs per contest when the righty pitched, the lowest run support for any starter who completed 140-or-more innings last season.

That's what makes his winning the American League Cy Young Award so special. It's astonishing that Greinke was able to win 16 games, period, let alone take home pitching's most prestigious award.

He earned 25 first-place votes, in a race that nearly mirrored his dominance over the rest of the pack last season.

Let's not forget, though, his competition in winning the award. The race for the Cy Young had to have been more exciting than the 65-97 record Greinke's Royals scraped together in 2009.

Seattle's Felix Hernandez turned in a stellar season, as well. Most likely, in any other year, namely one in which a pitcher does not contend the majority of the season for a sub-2.00 ERA, Hernandez would have been a shoo-in for the award.

Hernandez's 2.49 earned-run mark, second best behind Greinke, was lower than those of the previous eight AL Cy Young Award winners. After May 18, he went 15-2 with a 1.99 ERA, rivaling Greinke as the AL's most dominant pitcher.

Hernandez went on to finish 19-5 on the year, finishing with two first-place votes and 23 for the runner-up slot.

Verlander received just one first-place vote and nine for third place. That's not to say he didn't put together a remarkable year of his own.

In arguably the best season a Tiger pitcher has had since Jack Morris' 21-8 campaign in 1986, the tall, hard-throwing righty registered a 19-9 record and a 3.45 ERA.

While Verlander came away from this past season with no awards - merely a pat on the back for a job well-done (and perhaps a large bonus in the not-too-distant future) - he showed Detroit's front office he had successfully bounced back from 2008, the ugliest year of his career.

As the Tigers stumbled to a 74-88 mark that year, Verlander was equally unimpressive. He turned in an 11-17 record with a 4.84 ERA, by far his worst season in what had been, to that point, a dominant early career.

However, his turnaround was obviously a swift one with a Cy Young-caliber performance in 2009.

GREINKE HAD something the others didn't, however.

He overcame clinical depression and had the pride and gumption to keep going and performing at a ridiculously-high level for a team going nowhere.

That's what set him apart from the rest. And kudos to the baseball writers who got it right this time.

(Kelsey Boudin, a Times Herald sports writer, can be reached at boudinkm@sbu.edu)

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