Quality start

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In baseball statistics, a quality start is awarded to a starting pitcher who completes at least six innings and permits no more than three earned runs.

The quality start was developed by sportswriter John Lowe in 1985 while writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer.^[1] The statistic is preferred by sabermetricians to that of winning percentage (the number of wins garnered by a pitcher as a fraction of his total decisions) insofar as it acts independently of some factors beyond a pitcher's control such as fielding errors, blown saves, and poor run support. ESPN.com terms a loss suffered by a pitcher in a quality start as a tough loss and a win earned by a pitcher in a non-quality start a cheap win.^[2]

1 Criticisms
- 1.1 High ERA
- 1.2 Complete Games
2 References

[edit] Criticisms

[edit] High ERA

An early criticism of the statistic, made by Moss Klein, writing in The Sporting News, is that a pitcher could conceivably meet the minimum requirements for a quality start and record a 4.50 ERA, seen as undesirable at the time. Bill James addressed this in his 1987 Baseball Abstract, saying the hypothetical example (a pitcher going exactly 6 innings and allowing exactly 3 runs) was extremely rare amongst starts recorded as quality starts, and that he doubted any pitchers had an ERA over 3.20 in their quality starts. This was later confirmed through computer analysis of all quality starts recorded from 1984 to 1991, which found that the average ERA in quality starts during that time period was 1.91.^[3]

[edit] Complete Games

Another criticism against the statistic is that it isn't beneficial for pitchers who pitch many innings per start. If a pitcher allows 3 Earned Runs in 6.0 innings, he gets a Quality Start with an ERA of 4.50 for that game. But if a pitcher pitches for 9.0 innings and allows 4 Earned Runs, he would have a 4.00 ERA, but wouldn't get the Quality Start.