Jason Stark on Petro: "You could argue besides Denis Leonard and Zach Greinke that this is the best Royals pitcher ever."

This is where he came up with that:
In the history of the Royals, I count 199 different pitchers who have started at least one game. And, according to the brand new 2013 edition of Lee Sinins' fabulous Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, you know how many 15-win, 200-whiff seasons those 199 starting pitchers have had COMBINED?
Shields
That would be two -- one by Zack Greinke in 2009, the other by Dennis Leonard in 1977. And that's it. So Shields has had as many seasons like that by himself in the last two seasons as all those Royals pitchers have had in the last 44 seasons. Unreal.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/stark_jayson/id/8732962/everything-more-know-rays-royals-tradeOf course, anyone could point to 3 Cy Young seasons (Sabes in 85 and 89, Cone in a strike shortened 94) and tell you that we've had some pretty good pitching outside of just Greinke and Leonard.
Cone's 94 season, at the front end of the steroid juiced up ball era is really freakin' good. 2.44 Strikeout/Walk ratio, 1.072 WHIP (career low), 4 complete games, 3 shutouts, etc.