Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Most Overrated Stat

I am a huge baseball fan and part of being a huge fan is my sick fascination of baseball stats. In preparing for my Strat-o-Matic seasons, I look at stats forwards and backwards (as part of my No Stat Left Behind program). It is almost sickening sometimes that I can remember any players stat but I can't remember what my wife told me about 5 minutes ago. A stat that the ESPN "morons" use more and more is the worthless stat: Quality Starts. A "quality start" is basically a starting pitcher pitching 5 innings and allowing less than 3 runs. Now think about this, if a starting pitcher pitches just 5 innings and allows 3 earned runs, that means his ERA is a 5.40. A 5.40 ERA usually means that this particular pitcher is headed back to the minor leagues. To me, a quality start would occure if you did not have to use your bullpen. I am not that old but I can remember almost all starting pitchers pitching to at least the 7th inning. The 'quality start" statistic is worthless, get rid of it and starting pitchers start toughening up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amen Tobicus Maximus. ESPN sucks. I don't understand why they seem to think that promoting former athletes (oh, I mean living cliches) into prime time television positions is a good idea. All those guys can do is vomit back catch phrases like "quality start" because if they had any semblance of intelligence they would be managing baseball teams, taking too much credit for jobs they didn't really do.