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).
What's Good and What's Not
From my observations, 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.
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). Read the link, as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how s low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.
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). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.
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.
Final Giants Starters' PQS for 2010 Season
Madison Bumgarner- (50% DOM, 22% DIS; 9:4/18): 4, 4, 3, 4, 1, 5, 5, 0, 1, 2, 4, 0, 3, 5, 4, 3, 5, 3
Matt Cain- (67% DOM, 6% DIS; 22:2/33): 5, 3, 4, 3, 5, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 4, 3, 3, 0, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 0
Tim "The Kid" Lincecum - (61% DOM, 18% DIS; 20:6/33): 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 0, 1, 5, 5, 4, 5, 0, 3, 5, 4, 0, 3, 5, 4, 0, 0, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 2, 5, 5
Joe Martinez- (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/1): 3
Jonathan Sanchez - (48% DOM, 18% DIS; 16:6/33): 0, 5, 5, 3, 0, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 0, 3, 2, 4, 0, 5, 4, 3, 5, 0, 4, 5, 0, 5, 5, 3, 5, 4, 4, 3
Todd Wellemeyer - (30% DOM, 40% DIS; 3:4/10): 2, 0, 0, 3, 0, 4, 2, 4, 5, 0, X
Barry Zito - (42% DOM, 33% DIS; 14:11/33): 5, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 1, 5, 2, 4, 4, 0, 5, 1, 0, 5, 3, 3, 5, 4, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 5, 3, 4, 0, 0
X = start Wellemeyer was injured in and had to leave the game. I don't include these in my analysis.
Giants season overall - 52% DOM, 20% DIS out of 161 games counted (84:33/161)
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)
Giants Month of August - 46% DOM, 36% DIS out of 28 games counted (13:10/28)
Giants Month of Sept/Oct - 66% DOM, 14% DIS out of 29 games counted (19:4/29)
September found the Giants starting pitchers - mostly, except for Zito - all took it to the max. We already know that they had a great month, what with the 18 consecutive games with 3 runs or less given up, but the PQS reflects how good it was. Almost 5 times the DOM starts than DIS starts. 66% DOM starts AS A STAFF. Remember, an elite PITCHER has a DOM% > 70%, and the staff together did that. This is what I've been talking about for years now, how having a great overall staff is a competitive advantage over other teams, whether over a whole season or in playoff series.
Cain and Sanchez kept on chugging while Lincecum and Bumgarner got themselves squared away in Sept/Oct. Lincecum and Cain both had 5 DOM starts in 6 starts; Cain also had a DIS start in his last start. Sanchez had 4 DOM starts in his 6 starts, with no DIS starts. Even Bumgarner had 3 DOM starts in his 5 starts; his two non-DOM starts were in his last three starts, indicating that perhaps he was tiring.
Zito earned his non-rostering in the playoffs with his performance . Mr. Second Half had 3 DIS starts in 6 starts (though also 2 DOM starts), the worse performance by far on the staff. It would have been a DIS under 10% (that's when you can expect to be in almost every game) for the staff had he been able to man up and deliver in either of his last two starts. However, when the team needed a well pitched game, he delivered two 0 PQS games, two DIS starts. He almost cost the team their playoff berth and dismantle all the great work that his fellow starters did in September (collectively 17 DOM starts, 1 DIS start, in 23 starts for 74% DOM and 4% DIS).
Still, what a performance by the rotation for a month! And for the season!
52% DOM is great for any particular pitcher but superlative for a whole rotation over a whole season. And they were able to keep the DIS at 20% for the season, and under that for four of the six months. Another superlative performance. Remember, most teams would be happy to have an ace with 52% DOM and 20% DIS, and ecstatic to have a #2 who could do that too, then it would probably go off the charts after that: the Giants five starters did that.
And each individual pitcher has done well. Cain has been Mr. Steady all season long, leading to his breakout season in PQS, attaining a 67% DOM for the season paired with an ultra-low 6% DIS. Cain has moved from his steady greatness to elite status this season, leading the staff in DOM% for the first time.
Of course, that is partly the result of Lincecum's struggles this season, a roller coaster of a season that ended on a high. When The Kid is on, nobody beats him. But he wasn't on for significant segments of the season and so it was a down season for him. Still, with a 61% DOM that virtually any starter would give their first and second born to attain, he still had a great season, paired with an acceptable 18% DIS.
Jonathan Sanchez also had a breakout season. He's always been capable of delivering consecutive DOM starts over a long stretch - he first did that in 2008 in his first season as a starter - but for one reason or another (fatigue, bad mechanics, between the ears) the season ended up a disappointment in some way. No longer. His 2010 season had him raise his game significantly, with a 48% DOM and OK 18% DIS (just one DOM start away from a great DOM of over 50%) and showing guts and bravado with his promise in mid-August to beat the 'Dres, in prelude to a sweep, and not look back, which only came true in the last game of the season, as he not only lost that August game but the Giants lost that series.
But what a last game, he pitched the game of his life, the Giants needed to win that game or be thrown into playoff hell, with all sorts of bad options including games to determine who plays whom in the actual playoffs plus the loss of Lincecum and perhaps Cain to start off the playoffs. Instead, by pitching a great game and winning that game, the Giants got a lot of well deserved rest before the Atlanta series, and the Giants could start with Lincecum and Cain.
Sanchez has matured a lot this season and has risen to another level, and like Cain, I would not be surprised if he takes another leap to elite status next season. Despite the great last month of this season, 2011 is when everyone will see the beauty of what I've been preaching about for the past few seasons, of how having a good to great rotation, top to bottom, will allow the Giants to cruise into the playoffs and through the playoffs.
Bumgarner had a great rookie season. It had its ups and downs but in the final analysis, he had a 50% DOM and 22% DIS, which the vast majority of pitchers would love to have, those are great numbers to have. Plus he ended on a great note, with 3 DOM and 0 DIS starts in 5 starts at the end of the season. If he does that all season in 2011, we could have four starters who could legitimately be the ace for almost any rotation in the majors, only we have four of them on our staff. And he just turned 21 YO and we control him for another 6 seasons.
Zito, well, he actually did not pitch that bad by his standards or by regular standards. A 42% DOM is good, most pitchers in the majors would love to do that. His 33% DOM was not great, actually pretty bad, but it is what it is. The good news is that he minimized that badness (or really, Bochy did by taking him out before he gave up a lot of runs) and still had a very good ERA overall, 4.15 for the season.
And life is ruled by a lot of "what have you done for me lately" so I want to take a moment here and note that he was the staff co-ace early in the season, with Cain. He was a relatively steady force when others were struggling to find their way and that kept the Giants head above water (and .500) in the early going as the team struggled to find its identity and its consistency.
Had he floundered too, heck, if he did not charge out of the box with a string of great pitching performances, the Giants would have been floundering too, in a sea of losses that would have been a total downer on the team, much like how in 2008 and 2009, when the Giants had that bad road series against the D-gers and 'Dres, losing almost every game, leaving the Giants under water (and .500) for a long time. He helped pick up the team then and when he floundered near the end of the season, his teammates picked him up.
September/October 2010 Comments: A Team is Cobbled Together
And that is really the key term for the 2010 Giants, not just the starting pitchers: team. There has really been no superstar performance this season, even Timmy had his bad moments. But when some players were playing bad, other players would get hot and carry the team. Two pariahs now, Zito and Rowand, carried the team early in the season, helping them to stay over .500, which I think helps the team not get into thinking about being losers. And the team built on that as the year went on.
Of course, our pitching is our bread and butter, where we get our wins, both starting pitching and the bullpen, which had a stupendous Sept/Oct itself, BTW. Everything begins and ends with the pitching staff. But in between, the offense has been contributing enough, as a team, so that the Giants won a LOT of games, particularly after Posey became the starting catcher.
The team concept is a particularly apt term for the offense. No real star this season, though Posey, Burrell, and Huff certainly had very good seasons, just not superstar seasons offensively (Posey had superstar stats for a catcher, but for an offensive player, he was "only" very good). Each month, heck, each game, had another guy contributing. When certain players were scuffling, other players picked it up and carried the team on their backs, before another teammate put the team on his back.
Every game almost literally had a new hero, and former bench players would rise and take over. Almost everybody who has been on the roster, at one time or another, has helped the team get one win closer to their goal: the playoffs. Until they finally did it, they made the playoffs.
The vast majority of the players on the team has never been in the playoffs before, so it has been a test of their mettle, but fortunately, there are players on the team who have been in the playoffs before, and they will certainly try to help their teammates get over the hump.
That is why you want to sign vets to fill gaps on the team, they may not be the best anymore, they might be more injury prone, but they have experience that they can share and guidance they can provide. It could be as simple as Burrell sharing his experiences with his teammates to as impactful as Renteria observing Ross's bad batting mechanics. Obviously, they have been doing a great job of it so far, and hopefully it leads to a World Series championship (I think we are close enough to dream now).
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