Greinke received 25 of 28 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. His 134 points easily outdistanced runner-up and Seattle Mariners right-hander Felix Hernandez, who received two first-place votes and 80 points. Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers had one first-place vote.

CC Sabathia of the New York Yankees and Roy Halladay of the Toronto Blue Jays rounded out the top five.

"There's a lot of positive to it and some negative to it," said Greinke, who went 16-8 with a major league-best 2.16 ERA. "I really don't like having a bunch of attention."

Greinke, 26, was diagnosed in 2006 with depression and social anxiety and missed most of the major league season. He returned to the Royals organization after a six-week absence, but the team was careful with him, limiting his exposure to the major leagues until late September.

"I can't sit here and say I knew he'd come back and pitch and that baseball would be part of his life," said Boston Red Sox special assistant Allard Baird, the Royals' general manager at the time. "But I can say that I was confident he would be happy again.

"Here is a kid, taking on a very private issue, and he went through it in the eyes of the public. You talk about mental toughness and challenges. That still amazes me."

Greinke, who said he would always be indebted to Baird for his compassion and patience, wasn't ready to embrace being a role model.

"Even if I did see myself in that light, I don't do anything about it," Greinke said on a conference call with news reporters.

"I'm real uncomfortable doing stuff like that, to be around people."

Greinke liked his chances to win the award, but the right-hander wondered how much his low victory total and playing on a lousy team would hurt his candidacy.

Turns out it he needn't worry.

Greinke on Tuesday joined David Cone (1994 with the Royals) as the only starting pitchers to win the AL Cy Young Award with fewer than 18 victories in a season. He also became the first AL pitcher to win the Cy Young on a team that won fewer than 72 games, with the Royals going 65-97.

Hernandez, who went 15-2 with a 1.99 ERA after May 18, had a lower ERA than the previous eight AL Cy Young winners. This year, it wasn't good enough.

"I thought it was going to be real close between the two of us," Greinke said. "I really though Felix Hernandez did fantastic this year."

"Greinke deserved it," Hernandez told the Associated Press from his home in Venezuela. "This has taught me that I need to be perfect. I will need a superb year, because just a good one, it's not enough."

Greinke is planning to be better, too. He already had the lowest ERA in the AL since Pedro Martinez (1.74) in 2000, and his 242 strikeouts were second behind Verlander's 269. Greinke gave up just 11 home runs — nine solo and two two-run homers. And he still won 16 games despite the Royals scoring 4.83 runs a game — the lowest of any AL starter with at least 140 innings. He had three losses and seven no-decisions in games in which he gave up two or fewer runs.

The key to his success, blocking out the Royals' inadequacies, he said, was his strong mental approach. Of course, it also didn't hurt when he started the season 6-0 with a 0.40 ERA.

"A lot of things worked out good," Greinke said. "I really don't know how it happened at first. It started off real good, and it really helped my confidence having success like that.

"Once I started to believe I can pitch real good, it helped me the rest of the way, and I started believing I can do good things. … You work your whole life to do something and get acknowledged for it. I'll work real hard to do it again."

Enlarge By Ed Zurga, AP Royals starter Zack Greinke didn't have the most victories (16), but he led the majors with a 2.16 ERA and his 4.75 strikeouts per walk ranked fourth in the league.