Should Jake Arrieta have won the NL Cy Young Award over Zack Greinke?

Jake Arrieta, the former Orioles pitcher with the Chicago Cubs, is this year's National League Cy Young Award winner, but this is another award I don't get.

Arrieta was the best second-half pitcher in baseball and he's a reason the Cubs won the wild card game. But should he win the NL Cy Young Award? I don't think so.

I was one of the 30 voters from the Baseball Writers' Association of America who cast a ballot for this award.

People asked if this was the most difficult vote among the postseason awards, given Arrieta and the Dodgers' Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw. Greinke had a 0.84 WHIP, while Arrieta was at 0.86 and Kershaw 0.88.

I say no.

Kershaw, a three-time NL Cy Young winner, was the first pitcher in 13 seasons to have 300-plus strikeouts (301) in a season. He won 16 games with a 2.13 ERA.

Still, Kershaw was the third-best pitcher. This race was between Arrieta and Greinke.

And it was easy to select the 32-year-old Greinke. He was 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA, the lowest ERA for a starting pitcher since Atlanta's Greg Maddux was at 1.63 in 1995.

Greinke led the NL in winning percentage and WHIP. He pitched at least six innings in each of his 32 starts, allowing no more than one run in 21 of them.

So what did Greinke have to do to win a Cy Young Award?

That's a good question.

Arrieta had amazing dominance, but not for an entire season. He led the NL with 22 wins. He had six losses, 20 consecutive quality starts, a no-hitter and a 0.75 ERA in the second half.

And the argument that Arrieta wins the intangibles because he pitched the Cubs into the postseason doesn't work.

True, Arrieta and Jon Lester were the Cubs' only reliable starters. The Dodgers, too, had only two reliable starters, Greinke and Kershaw, and they were in the postseason.

This award is not about which pitcher had the best half season. This award is about consistent pitching for six months. Greinke did it. Arrieta didn't.

Arrieta's ERA in the first half was 2.66 compared to Greinke's 1.39. Arrieta's June ERA was 3.99 in a month where he gave up more hits (39) than innings pitched (38 1/3).

Greinke's highest monthly ERA was 2.45.

Now, Arrieta's first-half ERA isn't too shabby and who cares about one bad month especially for a pitcher that finished with a 1.77 ERA?

But in the context of a NL Cy Young race, one bad month should have been enough to keep Arrieta from winning the award, especially with the history-making season that Greinke put together.