UTK Special 1/29/24

Ignoring Quality

The Quality Start is one of those stats that makes sense. Do this, call it that. Go six innings and give up three runs or less makes sense, especially when it often appears to lead to wins.

Ben Fredrickson, who’s a solid Cardinals writer in the long line of solid Cardinals writers, wrote over the weekend about this and did a nice job. Except he’s wrong.

The quality start is another remnant, like the win, of an age where pitchers regularly went deep, even completing games on their own, and where a bullpen was an annoyance, there to cover failure by the starter rather than be a weapon in its own right.

Even John Mozeliak, quoted in the article, gets the premise wrong. Shorter starts only put pressure on a bullpen if the bullpen isn’t built for it. In an age where pens are 7 or 8 men and functionally more with a Triple-A shuttle and an inability to have one-out guys, every pen is made for it. This isn’t Earl Weaver’s Orioles.

In 1973, the Orioles used 12 pitchers, total, on the year. Three made 38 starts, including Dave McNally. McNally went 17-17 on the year with 87 strikeouts and 81 walks. That’s in 266 innings. Alexis Diaz had 86 strikeouts last year in 67 innings and yes, he was throwing a lot harder. McNally was an All-Star that year and numbers like that would be … well, he likely wouldn’t be starting. (Also, he had 202 strikeouts a few years previously … what changed, in that pre-Tommy John era?)

Curt Gowdy starts that clip saying that McNally “has a good, live fastball today.” And he clearly did, getting the complete game win, giving up three runs on three hits, none earned. But while this fits every definition of quality start as both a descriptive phrase and a defined stat, what does it tell us? It doesn’t tell us he got the win, that he went nine, that his defense failed him early, or anything about how or what he threw. How live was that fastball? How and why did Clemente get two hits, but Stargell didn’t? There’s no single stat that does this, but quality start barely gives us information. It’s a definition more than a description.

(I’m curious - does anyone know how hard McNally was throwing at this stage?)