2010 Giants: July PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of July 2010, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here. I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so 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). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

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.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2010 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (71% DOM, 14% DIS; 5:1/7): 4, 4, 3, 4, 1, 5, 5

Matt Cain- (57% DOM, 5% DIS; 12:1/21): 5, 3, 4, 3, 5, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 4, 3, 3, 0, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4

Tim "The Kid" Lincecum - (59% DOM, 18% DIS; 13:4/22): 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 0, 1, 5, 5, 4, 5, 0, 3, 5, 4, 0, 3, 5

Joe Martinez- (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/1): 3

Jonathan Sanchez - (38% DOM, 19% DIS; 8:4/21): 0, 5, 5, 3, 0, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 0, 3, 2, 4, 0, 5, 4, 3

Todd Wellemeyer - (30% DOM, 40% DIS; 3:4/10): 2, 0, 0, 3, 0, 4, 2, 4, 5, 0, X

Barry Zito - (50% DOM, 23% DIS; 11:5/22): 5, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 1, 5, 2, 4, 4, 0, 5, 1, 0, 5, 3, 3, 5

X = start Wellemeyer was injured in and had to leave the game. I don't include these in my analysis.

Giants season overall - 50% DOM, 18% DIS out of 76 games counted (52:19/104)
Giants Month of April - 55% DOM, 14% DIS out of 22 games counted (12:3/22)
Giants Month of May - 50% DOM, 21% DIS out of 28 games counted (14:6/28)
Giants Month of June - 42% DOM, 19% DIS out of 26 games counted (11:5/26)
Giants Month of July - 54% DOM, 18% DIS out of 28 games counted (15:5/28)

July was another flip-flop.  Cain and Sanchez went back to dominating, while Lincecum and Zito struggled a bit.  The key difference to a 20-8 month is that Bumgarner was tied for the staff lead in DOM games with Cain at 4 starts each.  That is a significance difference between a .500 month going 15-13 or 14-14 and the 20-8 month they had, that plus the offense.  As noted, Bumgarner and Cain had 4 DOM starts each, Sanchez had 3 DOM in 5 starts, while both Lincecum and Zito had 2 DOM starts each.  .

That staff overall had a DOM of 50% and a DIS of 18%, which is pretty good both ways, and had their best month since April. Generally, you want a DIS under 20%, and ideally under 10%, and a DOM over 50%, as a pitcher but our WHOLE staff overall was almost doing what very well starters alone can do in the majors, with a 49% DOM.  Having Bumgarner made a huge difference to the overall staffs production in PQS.

What's Good and What's Not

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).

July 2010 Comments

I covered a lot of this in the trade post I wrote a couple of days ago, so I'm not going to do much here.  The key is that the offense is now situated pretty well with Torres leadoff, Huff third, Posey third, and Uribe, Burrell, and Sandoval tag teaming 5th.  If Sandoval can get back to his care-free ways, we will have a pretty good offense going for us, and leave the other teams in the dust.  Plus, of course, the pitching needs to continue doing its major league best in keeping runs from scoring, which it has done for a long while now successfully.

I'm a little worried about Lincecum, but with Bumgarner doing so well, we still had a great month in July despite Lincecum not really pitching that well overall, who would have ever thought that possible?  I've heard somewhere that he stopped doing a lot of the exercises and routines that he did during his amateur years that got him here, and have to believe that this is the reason for his drop in velocity.  Hopefully he will start listening to his dad again and start those exercises again.  If he can regain even part of that velocity back, we could probably glide into the playoffs on the backs of our pitchers.