Your 2015 Giants: A Peek at PQS Data

As you may or may not remember, I've been actively keeping track of PQS data the last two seasons, and this season I expanded it to include the actual pitching line for each starter, so that I could build pivot tables and see what the numbers say.

ogc thoughts

So I'm just going to go with a short post today and look at something obvious, which is what happens when you pitch better than the other team and vice-versa (and tied).

Obviously, when you pitch better, you win a lot, but 35-12 is a much bigger statement than just saying that in words.   That is a .745 winning percentage (or a 121 seasonal win rate).  And the opposite is true when you are outpitched:  13-27 or .325 (53 seasonal win rate).  Ties, of course, are kind of random, but this year the Giants are 11-13, so a little bad luck there.

As the above implies, the Giants rotation, while clearly having a down season, is still outpitching the opposition more times than not, 47 starts out-pitching the opposition, 40 starts under-pitching.

And if you break them down further, 19 of the 40 starts were DIS starts that a team most likely should lose (2-17 so far), leaving 21 starts which were not disasters.  14 of them were MIDs and the Giants were 7-7 in these in spite of being outpitched.  7 of them were DOM starts, and the Giants were 4-3, again, in spite of being outpitched.  This also shows the power of getting DOM starts in winning.

In ties, the Giants were 2-2 in DIS starts, 2-5 in MID starts, and 7-6 in DOM starts.   In spite of MID starts, the Giants have had a lot of bad starts, with a 5.97 ERA in the six 3-PQS starts (1-5 record).  Generally MID starts are not that extreme in ERA.

Where the Giants outpitched, they were 2-0 in DIS starts, 7-6 in MID starts, and 26-6 in DOM starts, for a total of 47 starts.  That's a .813 winning percentage in DOM starts where the Giants starters outpitched the other team.   And, again, the power of DOM starts shows up bright and shiny.

Looking at the wonderful win streak and comparing to this recent road trip, one could see the dichotomy just as clear as the above.   They won 2, lost 3, and tied for PQS 5 times on the 10 game road trip where they went 3-7.  Meanwhile, in the prior 17 games, when they went 14-3, they won 8, lost 3, and tied for PQS 6 times.

So, while people understand that it is obviously better to have better pitching, the data shows just how dominating it is for a team to have pitching that regularly beats the other team's pitching.  They are 59-52, 7 games above .500 and they have outpitched the opposition 47 times vs. 40 times, or 7 more games.   Thus, as well as the offense has been doing, it has basically come down to the basic fact of whether our starting pitching outpitched the opponents.  And for the most part, they have.