i'm not trying to say your wrong....
the 4340 vacuum melt is just as implied, it is melted in a vaccum to remove air bubbles and impurities common with forgings or castings. then it is cnc machined (just like a billet rod would be), heat treated to 36 rock (just like a billet would be), shot peened for stress re-leaving (can do same thing in another heat treating cycle and can be done to a "billet"), and the only other machining op is the edm of the oil hole which can be done to a billet?
so what do you really have here? a cheaper billet as far as i'm concerned. the only reason they used a forging is so they wouldn't waste all the material that they would cut away from a block of steal. it's CHEAPER!!!
you don't have to pay for the tooling to mill out the rod, the holder, the end mill, the inserts, the guy to write the program, etc. and as far as the custom dimensions go, it would be a helluva lot easier to change the x-y dimensions on a mill than spend 40,000 on a new forging die to customer specs.
just my take on this!
corey