2007 Giants: July PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of July, as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here. I wrote on this last season and compiled their stats on a regular basis and I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this).

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). See my explanation down below on methodology plus read the link, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and particularly how low DIS% is so important.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2007 Season (as of July 31, 2007)

Matt Cain - (48% DOM, 24% DIS; 10:5/21): 4, 3, 5, 3, 3, 0, 3, 5, 5, 4, 4, 2, 5, 4, 1, 5, 3, 1, 0, 0, 5
Tim Lincecum - (67% DOM, 27% DIS; 10:4/15): 0, 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 0, 0, 0, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 5
Noah Lowry - (38% DOM, 14% DIS; 8:3/21): 5, 3, 4, 2, 2, 5, 3, 3, 3, 0, 3, 2, 4, 0, 2, 5, 4, 1, 4, 4, 2
Matt Morris - ( 29% DOM, 19% DIS; 6:4/21): 3, 1, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 3, 5, 4, 0, 2, 2, 3, 0, 0, 4, 4
Russ Ortiz - ( 20% DOM, 20% DIS; 1:1/5): 2, 4, 2, 2, 0
Barry Zito - ( 24% DOM, 24% DIS; 5:5/21): 2, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 0, 3, 5, 4, 0, 3, 0, 3, 3, 0, 5, 2, 0

Giants season overall - 38% DOM, 21% DIS out of 104 games pitched (40:22/104)
Giants Month of April - 29% DOM, 4% DIS out of 24 games pitched (7:1/24)
Giants Month of May - 43% DOM, 18% DIS out of 28 games pitched (12:5/28)
Giants Month of June - 33% DOM, 30% DIS out of 28 games pitched (9:8/27)
Giants Month of July - 48% DOM, 32% DIS out of 25 games pitched (12:8/25)

After doing pretty well in April and May, then declining greatly in June, the Giants pitchers had a pretty mixed month of July, Lincecum turned himself around with 5 DOM starts and Lowry had 3 himself, but Zito, Morris, and Cain had two or more disaster starts in July. As the pitchers showed in April, a low DOM does not necessarily sink a month (or a season), but a high DIS does.

A DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). That's how Lowry was able to pitch well last year, keeping his ERA low while still recovering from his strained oblique and being unable to strike out hitters as much as before, he had very few disaster starts until he had his arm problems and got bombed in September, he had a good ERA, in the high 3's until those starts.

Latest Comments

The staff has been on a falling trend in terms of disaster starts, month by month. As May showed, a high DOM% does not translate to wins readily, but a high DIS% does translate to losses readily. And thus the Giants had a June Swoon of great proportion, dropping them to last place and about 10 games (or more) below .500 for much of the month. July was not as bad, only because Lincecum righted himself and Lowry continued to pitch very well, else the month would have been another disaster. As it was, the Giants continued to occupy last place by a large margin most of the month, going 12-13 but still gaining a game in the standings.

The staff was led by Lincecum and Lowry, who had 100%DOM/0%DIS and 60%DOM/20% DIS, respectively. The rest, as noted above, had at least 2 disaster starts each, Cain having 3 of them; to keep your DIS% low, you can only afford 1 disaster start every two months.

This fits in with what I've been saying about the Giants starters, that because there are pitchers who can keep their BABIP lower than average, like Zito and Cain, and Lincecum when he is on, plus Russ Ortiz, this PQS methodology does not capture their full abilities as a pitcher, as they can walk more and strikeout less than others and still be successful even though they don't have as many DOM starts. However, disaster starts are disaster starts, and that appears to apply to all pitchers equally well.

Lincecum's Towering of Power; Cain's Towering Inferno

Lincecum had a particularly good month in July, reversing what he did in June. He righted his ship totally and has been the best pitcher on our staff for a while now. He even got his walks down low as well, with only one game really bad and two good games, including one with zero walks and twelve strikeouts!

In Cain's case, again it appeared that his disaster starts was a matter of Cain thinking that batters were better than they were and him not being as good as he was, so he didn't trust his fastball. You would have thought he would have learned his lesson last year, but he didn't. He explained after he righted his ship that he was watching the other starters and realized that he better start throwing strikes again. Oy! I would have thought that's the first thing you learn as a pitcher, hopefully this time this will stick with him, he's much better throwing strikes. :^)

August: Surge Up?

Well the July surge I was hoping for happened and didn't happen, as the DOM went up high but the DIS continued high. August looked to be very interesting until Lowry got injured but then Misch had his great first start, so who knows, we could find the Giants returning to near .500 territory again.

Lincecum is on a hot roll, Lowry was on a roll, and Cain appears to be on a role and all three looked ready to go into their superman mode and totally dominate. Misch looks like he might be able to take over for Lowry OK for a while, while he is out. But Zito is still up and down; this looks to be a lost season for him, but if he can end on a favorable note in August and September, that would be something to build off of for 2008.

In the rest of August, the Giants finish facing the sad sacks Nats and Pirates at home, then has an odd double-header in Pittsburgh to make up for two rained out games, before continuing on the road to Atlanta and Florida. Then they get the Cubs and Brewers at home before 3 at home with the Do'Rocks to complete a stretch of 31 games in 30 days; they have only one day of rest in August, on the 30th. So they are playing plenty of subpar team and perhaps can gain some ground.

Unfortunately, the teams above us are playing a similar set of teams, randomly distributed across them, so they could go on a run themselves. For the D-gers, the offense is nothing special and probably will continue to do so, but their pitching has been very good and could continue doing well. For the 'Dres, it is not likely that all their starters can continue to pitch so well, but perhaps it is their season. But their offense is nothing to write home about still.

I don't know how the D-backs are doing it, their hitters are OK, but they have been playing well with their youngsters and took first place, so perhaps they finally figured things out.

Still, they all have things that are going better than expected and if they revert back to norm, their record will not be as good anymore. The Giants, meanwhile, have a lot of things which are below norms, and I would argue that none of the pitchers are doing anything that they have not shown themselves to be capable of previously, and Zito should get better too to offset that. Plus Cain and Lowry has gone on torrid hot streaks during this time period.

That gives us the chance to get back to .500, and a slim chance to get back into the race. But when you are this far behind and it is July already, all you can do is first focus on getting to .500, then second to get within 5 games of first place, then finally can we think about being in the pennant race. But it looks too late for this year, we just have to lick our wounds and start thinking about next season and play the young guys extensively.

Go Giants!