2016 McDonald Award winner: Jake Arrieta

As they did virtually all season, Tucson's duo of Jake Arrieta and Zach Greinke proved to be a formidable 1-2 punch, even in the final balloting for the Ben McDonald Pitching Excellence Award.

Arrieta was a unanimous choice on 7 ballots with Greinke garnering the most second-place ballots (4). Greinke, who won the award with Vancouver in 2010, finished a distant second.

1. Jake Arrieta, TUC: 7-0-0-0-0 ---> 70 points
2. Zach Greinke, TUC, 0-4-1-1-0 ---> 36 points
3. Dallas Keuchel, ARK, 0-1-3-0-1 ---> 23 points
4. Adam Warren, SF, 0-1-1-2-2 ---> 20 points
5. Hishahi Iwakuma, ALN, 0-1-1-2-0 ---> 18 points
6. Corey Kluber, SCS, 0-0-1-0-0 ---> 5 points
7. Clayton Kershaw, HBK, 0-0-0-1-1 ---> 4 points
8. David Price, ALN, 0-0-0-0-2 ---> 2 points

It's the first McDonald Award for Arrieta and the first in Tucson's history. The right-hander won the ERA title and finished second to Greinke for league-best WHIP while running up a record of 18-4 and a league-high 26 quality starts.

Also receiving second-place votes (one each) were Dallas Keuchel of Arkansas, San Francisco's Adam Warren, and Allentown's Hishashi Iwakuma. Keuchel finished 3rd in the voting with 23 points, adding three 3rd-place votes (the most of any pitcher) and a 5th-place vote this his lone 2nd-place ballot. He was the top finisher among left-handers.

A fellow 20-game winner, Warren finished 4th with 20 points, a result of one 3rd-place vote, and a pair of 4th- and 5th-place nods. Iwakuma garnered 18 points, finishing 5th, thanks to another 3rd-place vote and two 4th-place nods.

Hoboken ace Clayton Kershaw finished 7th, with a 4th- and 5th-place vote for 4 points. Allentown's David Price earned a pair of 5th-place votes for his 20-win season to finish 8th in the balloting with 2 points.

Arrieta, who turned 31 on Monday, took a winding path to Tucson but he didn't quite come out of nowhere. A highly regarded prospect at one time, the Missouri native was selected in the 2011 supplemental draft by Hoboken (21st round/6th supplemental, 278th overall) but never made the opening day roster. He was picked up by Newark where he literally recorded one out before he was released, eventually kicking around the rosters of Amityville and Livingston.

Livingston gave him a shot in 2012 but he wasn't able to do much with it. He finished 4-15 in 28 starts with a 5.90 ERA. Newark must have liked what they saw in that 1/3 inning, taking a chance on Arrieta late in the 2013 draft (5th supplemental/20th round, 297th overall), but that never panned out.

In June 2014, Arrieta signed as a free agent with the Durham Bulls. He only made one appearance for the Bulls that year before making the move with the franchise to Tucson. Still, the Bulls must have helped him unjam his chakras because Arrieta put it together in 2015 for his first strong season, going 16-5 with a 2.52 ERA in 229 innings, including 25 quality starts for the then-Scorpions, before truly blossoming with his McDonald-winning 2016.