The Barren Year of 2014

No Matt Harvey, now no Jose Fernandez. 

Yes, of course, the site's in mourning.

How High-Quality is a Quality Start?

One of the easier-to-understand new metrics is the Quality Start, a statistic invented by Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter John Lowe in 1985 (according to Wikipedia). (I suppose something that's been around 29 years isn't all that new.) A starting pitcher gets credit for a quality start if he pitches six or more innings and allows three or fewer earned runs. That's it.

The criticism you hear of a quality start is that three runs in six innings is a 4.50 ERA, which isn't very good. Of course, a perfect game's a quality start too. Do quality starts indicate pitching excellence or mediocrity?

I looked at quality starts in 2013. Here are a few tidbits:

• There were 2,431 games last year, so 4,862 games started. There were 2,556 quality starts. That means about 53% of starts were quality starts. That doesn't sound that impressive. But wait.
• The leaders: Clayton Kershaw and James Shields had 27, Adam Wainwright had 26, Cole Hamels and Max Scherzer had 25. By percentage of starts: Kershaw had quality starts in 82% of his starts, Shields 79%, Scherzer 78%, and Cliff Lee, Bartolo Colon, Chris Sale, and Matt Harvey all had 77%. Those are all good pitchers, including both Cy Young Award winners. That sounds good.
• Teams that got a quality start won 65.6% of their games last year. That's the equivalent of going 106-56. That tells you that a quality start gives a team an excellent chance to win. 

All well and good, you're thinking, but do pitchers in quality starts actually pitch well? It turns out the answer is: Yeah, do they ever.

The major league average ERA and WHIP for starters last year were 4.01 and 1.306, respectively. The six-inning, three-run outing with a 4.50 ERA cited above would thus be below-average.

But that's not the norm. In their 2,556 quality starts last year, pitchers compiled a 1.93 ERA and 0.986 WHIP. The closest to those figures: Kershaw's 1.83 ERA and Jose Fernandez's 0.979 WHIP. Yes, it's true that a starter can get a quality start with a 4.50 ERA. That happened 213 times last year, 8.3% of quality starts. But on average, you're getting something like Kershaw and Fernandez when you get a quality start.

2014 Predictions: NL East

As Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. These predictions for upcoming season are going to be pretty quick and dirty. You don't want to spend a lot of time reading them anyway, do you? Unlike other prognosticators, though, I'll revisit these to see how badly I did.

Since baseball games are the product of runs scored and runs allowed, I'm going to focus on those two metrics in developing my 2014 predictions. Here are predictions for the NL West and NL Central and the American League West, Central, and East.

Atlanta Braves - 96-66 in 2013, 4.2 runs scored per game (13th in MLB), 3.4 runs allowed per game (1st in MLB): Color me skeptical. The Braves got a lot of credit for locking down their young stars over the offseason, but what's that got to do with 2014? Here are two pairs of numbers that worry me about Atlanta: .266/.357/.512 vs. .236/.284/.473, and 22.2 vs. 11.6. The former pair is departed catcher Brian McCann's slash line against righties vs. that of his replacement this year, Evan Gattis. That may not be entirely fair, given that McCann bats left and Gattis right, but hey, 72.5% of plate appearances in the NL last year were with righties on the mound. The second pair is an estimate of the number of runs McCann saves per 7000 pitches (roughly a season) by pitch framing--catching a pitch on the fringe of the strike zone in such a way that the umpire calls it a strike instead of a ball--compared to Gattis. That may sound esoteric, but framing is something that can be measured, given that there are cameras in every ballpark the measure where a pitch crosses the plate and how it's called by the umpire. McCann's consistently been one of the very best. I think McCann's departure hurts the Braves' ability to both score and prevent runs. And that's before we consider the injuries to the team's starting pitchers this spring. (Pitch framing stats from Baseball Prospectus.) Prediction: Fewer runs scored, more allowed, 89-73.

Washington Nationals - 86-76, 4.0 runs scored per game (16th in MLB), 3.9 runs allowed per game (7th in MLB): The Nats still have questions at second base, where their .670 OPS was fourth-worst in the league, and they're hoping center fielder Denard Span plays more like he did after the All-Star Break (.302/.337/.413) than before (.263/.320/.358). But they added Doug Fister, a quality starter, for spare parts, bolstering an already-strong rotation. Prediction: A few more runs scored, a few fewer allowed, 90-72, and I'm going to regret that if Fister's elbow inflammation reported this month turns out to be serious.

New York Mets - 74-88, 3.8 runs scored per game (24th in MLB), 4.2 runs allowed per game (17th in MLB): The Mets added three 30+ free agents (SP Bartolo Colon, 41 in May; LF Curtis Granderson, 33; RF Chris Young, 30) to some promising youngsters (CF Juan Lagares, whose bat not keep his outstanding glove in the lineup; SP Zack Wheeler; SP Noah Syndergaard, who will probably start the year in the minors). But oh, for those Matt Harvey days... Prediction: More runs scored, more allowed, 74-88.

Philadelphia Phillies - 73-89, 3.8 runs scored per game (25th in MLB), 4.6 runs allowed per game (25th in MLB): The Phillies are making noises about embracing modern fielding analysis, which should help their newly-acquired groundball pitchers A.J. Burnett and Roberto Hernandez. But other than those moves, they're still a really old team (key offseason acquisitions: Marlon Byrd, 36; Burnett, 37; Hernandez, 33) that can't score runs even in a hitter-friendly ballpark. Prediction: Fewer runs scored, fewer allowed, 70-92.

Miami Marlins - 62-100, 3.2 runs scored per game (30th in MLB), 4.0 runs allowed per game (11th in MLB): The Marlins play in a pitchers' park, but their offense was really was bad as it looked: They scored easily the fewest runs in baseball at home and on the road. Among the new starters this year are 2B Rafael Furcal, who is 36, missed last year with Tommy John surgery, and will start at second base for the first time since 2002; and 3B Casey McGehee, who last year batted .292 with 28 homers and 93 RBI--in Japan. At least they'll have a full season of Jose Fernandez, knock on wood. Prediction: More runs scored, same number allowed, 65-97.

Matt Harvey, 2013

Let me just say this.

Pitchers with 191 or more strikeouts, 31 or fewer walks in a season (yes, I know they're arbitrary endpoints, just play along):

Player	Year	SO	BB	Age	Tm	Lg	G	GS	CG	W	L	W-L%	IP	H	R	ER	ERA
Matt Harvey	2013	191	31	24	NYM	NL	26	26	1	9	5	.643	178.1	135	46	45	2.27
Cliff Lee	2012	207	28	33	PHI	NL	30	30	0	6	9	.400	211.0	207	79	74	3.16
Roy Halladay	2010	219	30	33	PHI	NL	33	33	9	21	10	.677	250.2	231	74	68	2.44
Cy Young	1905	210	30	38	BOS	AL	38	33	31	18	19	.486	320.2	248	99	65	1.82
Cy Young	1904	200	29	37	BOS	AL	43	41	40	26	16	.619	380.0	327	104	83	1.97

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/26/2013.

(via Corey Seidman @CoreySeidman on Twitter)