You have no doubt heard that Armando Galarraga's masterpiece Wednesday night would have been baseball's third perfect game in a mere 24 days. Umpire Jim Joyce's error in judgment aside, the hot topic for analysts has been the lack of the offense in baseball. Yet, if this is the 21st century's version of The Year of the Pitcher, why are so many top-of-the-line hurlers struggling to thrive amidst offensive absence?

Zach Greinke handily won the 2009 American League Cy Young Award pitching for a weak Royals team. In a dozen starts in 2010, however, Greinke has nearly as many losses (seven) as he did all of last season (eight). The 26-year-old righty has a 1-7 record and a 3.60 ERA.

Fantasy owners selected Greinke as one of the top 10 pitchers off the board in most drafts but have gotten terrible returns on their investments. Greinke's record has clearly been hurt by the fact that Kansas City has scored a grand total of 37 runs in the 12 contests he has started.

Even so, Greinke has been subpar. In his last six starts, he is 1-4 with a 5.09 ERA. Over his last half dozen outings, he is yielding 1.556 base runners per frame and is only striking out 6.9 batters per nine innings. He is surrendering hits at his highest rate since 2006 and is striking out batters less frequently than he did in any of his three most recent seasons.

The reaction of fantasy owners has been to make Greinke the most-traded pitcher in fantasy leagues. Although he is owned in nearly every league, almost one-third of his owners have put him on the bench. The way he is pitching right now, Greinke remains a No. 3 or No. 4 fantasy starter. His ERA, WHIP and strikeouts are still above average for a starting pitcher, so he remains worthwhile in fantasy leagues despite the inauspicious beginning of his campaign.

The National League version of Greinke is San Francisco's Tim Lincecum, the 2009 and 2008 Cy Young Award winner. Lincecum, like Greinke, is disappointing owners with his performance.

Lincecum started the year right where he left off each of the two previous seasons. Through May 15, Lincecum was 5-0 with a 1.76 ERA. In his last three outings, though, he is 0-2 with an 8.22 ERA and has not made it out of the sixth inning in any of those starts.

The most alarming facet of Lincecum's pitching of late is his sudden loss of control. In his last 19.1 innings pitched, he has issued 18 free passes. When a pitcher loses command of his pitches that drastically, it might be an indication of a more serious problem. Baseball experts have long been concerned with the amount of force that Lincecum exerts in order for his 165-pound frame to hurl the ball at nearly 100 miles per hour.

Lincecum is too valuable to put on the fantasy bench following just three bad starts, yet owners may want to consider trading him if they can get good value in return.

Dan Haren averaged 15 wins and a 3.18 ERA from 2007 to 2009 but has failed to capitalize on the paucity of offense this season. Haren has five wins and is tied for the league lead in strikeouts entering Friday. Unfortunately, he has a high 4.83 ERA, and his other statistics are not very good.

Haren led the NL in WHIP in 2009, with an impressive 1.003 mark. This year, he is allowing hits at an alarming rate. Opposing batters get 10.2 hits per nine innings against the Arizona ace, the most frequently he has allowed hits since becoming a full-time starter in 2005. His current WHIP of 1.317 is also his highest after permanently moving to the starting rotation.

More troubling is Haren's inability to keep the ball within the confines of the playing field; he has yielded a league-high 16 home runs in 82 innings pitched in 2010. In 229.1 innings last year, only 27 times did an opposing batter take him out of the yard.

On Tuesday in Los Angeles, Haren finally showed signs of his former self, shutting out the Dodgers for eight innings. Before that, he was 1-3 with a 7.92 ERA in his previous four starts. Fantasy owners need to continue to be patient with him. If Haren corrected a flaw in his most recent start, then he could be back on track. On the other hand, should it appear that Haren's good outing was simply anomalistic, it is time to trade him to an owner with lower expectations.