A "quality start" for a pitcher in baseball is defined as giving up no more than three runs in six or more innings of work. For frames of reference, a starter needs to complete at least five full innings (a majority out of nine) to be eligible for a win, and three runs in six innings would be a 4.50 ERA. So how did this definition come about? Show I've worked with a sliding scale, where a "quality start equivalent" (QSE) which would require at least five innings of work, and the number of innings minus the number of runs cannot be less than three. That is to say, five innings and two runs would qualify, as would seven innings and four runs. Has anyone in the sport used, or proposed, a similar "equivalent?" (On this scale, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have "only 16 quality starts in 26 games, would have 20 QSE's. Other teams would benefit from this adjustment, of course but not to the same degree.) Another thing that puzzles me is that a quality start is "retracted" if a starter goes six innings with no more than three runs, then pitches the seventh (and possibly an eighth) and gives up a fourth run. The way I look at it is that the pitcher earned a quality start for "three in six," then functioned as a "middle reliever," for the seventh inning. Put another way, the pitcher gave his manager the option of using only one inning of "middle" relief, even though the manager didn't use this option. Or don't the scorers see it that way?
 When a pitcher starts a baseball game, the goal is to get the most outs possible while also allowing as few runs as possible during that time. Of course, this may seem simple and ambiguous, and indeed, on the surface that’s a rather vague goal. With that said, someone came up with a stat to reflect that: the quality start. So, what is a quality start in baseball? A starting pitcher earns a quality start when they pitch six innings or more and they allow three earned runs or less. Quality starts are used as a statistic to judge how effective starting pitchers are at pitching deep into games while giving their teams a chance to win. By assigning two benchmarks that are easy to find and understand, the quality start statistic helps determine which starting pitchers are doing their job well. However, especially as baseball changes, a quality start doesn’t tell the whole story. What Is a Quality Start and How Often do They Occur?As stated before, a quality start is used as an unofficial way to gauge the quality of a starting pitcher’s outing by simultaneously judging how far he goes into a game with how well he does in the time he’s in the game. The question is, what exactly are the parameters and how often does this happen? Like we said before, a quality start is when the starting pitcher pitches at least six innings, allowing three earned runs or less. Unearned runs are excluded from this definition. In 2019, there were a total of 4,858 pitcher starts and 1,794 quality starts, or just a shade under 37% of all starts. In other words, with each game featuring two starting pitchers (obviously), a little over two out of every three games will feature one pitcher earning a quality start, though there are also plenty of games where both pitchers reach that criteria. The 2014 season saw Major League Baseball (MLB) set a quality start record, recording 2,623 of them with nearly 54% of all pitching starts resulting in a quality start. Before 1920, there was less offense and pitchers threw a complete game more often than not. Because of the high complete game rate, the highest quality start rate occurred in 1916, when 64.4% of all starts met the criteria. Once the modern “live” ball was introduced in 1920, quality start rates were regularly below 50% for nearly a quarter-century. Quality start rates began creeping up as scoring decreased in the 1950s, then decreased temporarily every time MLB expanded (1961, ’62, ’69, ’77, ’93, ’98). Quality start rates gradually fell in the 1980s, hovering around 50%, before declining in the early 2000s, rising in the early 2010s, and then culminating in the quality start record in 2014. In the last century, the highest quality start rate occurred in the low-scoring year of 1968, the so-called “Year of the Pitcher,” when 62.6% of starts resulted in a quality start. How Important Are Quality Starts?With the entire idea of a quality start being based around measuring how well a starting pitcher pitches and how long he’s on the mound, you would think that teams are better off having more pitchers deliver a quality start. To an extent, that’s correct, but that’s not a foolproof formula. In the Wild Card Era (since 1995), the quality start leaders, as a team, usually are successful and are often in the postseason. However, only one team (the 2016 Chicago Cubs) in that span has led the league in the quality start department and won the World Series. Why is this the case? Well, there are a few explanations. For one, as the famous quote from Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball goes, “the playoffs are a crapshoot.” That, of course, means that results in a five or seven-game series often don’t reflect how good certain teams were over 162 games. Looking back, 20 of the 26 quality start statistic league leaders between 1995 and 2019 (including one year where two teams tied) were in the postseason, but only three made it to the World Series, and the 2016 Cubs won the World Series out of that group. So that’s one explanation. Another thing that the quality start statistic doesn’t take into account is how good a team’s offense or bullpen is, though those two factors can certainly influence how pitchers are used. A team with a weak bullpen will likely be more inclined to push starters deeper into games, while teams with a weak offense may not let starters go as deep since games will likely be tighter with fewer runs scored. These factors mostly affect pitchers accumulating the required six innings for a quality start. As a result, one major flaw in the statistic is that a pitcher who allows three earned runs or less in 6.0 innings earns a quality start, but a pitcher who allows zero runs over 5 2/3 innings does not, even though the pitcher with the shorter outing pitched better. One classic example of this is the Tampa Bay Rays pitching strategy of the past few seasons. By utilizing “openers” who start games but are only designed to pitch an inning or two before giving way to a more conventional starter, the Rays frequently had games where a quality start was not possible by design because “starting” pitchers were only pitching short outings. As a result, in 2018, the first full season utilizing openers, the Rays recorded a quality start in only 39 games that year, the fewest in Major League Baseball and the fourth-fewest all-time in a non-shortened season. Yet, because of their strong (and often-used) bullpen, Tampa Bay finished with the second-best ERA in the American League and went 90-72, narrowly missing the playoffs. Likewise, the same year, the New York Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates tied for fourth in all of the MLB, each notching a quality start 80 times as a team, while neither team made the playoffs, thanks to lackluster offenses and bullpens leaving something to be desired. These inequities have spawned some people, such as the analytically-minded staff at FanGraphs, to ditch the quality start entirely, or at least rework it. What the solution may be, we don’t know. In the meantime, the term is here to stay, and even though the criteria leaves some things to be desired, there’s still nothing wrong with quality. Odds and Ends Regarding Quality Starts
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