Boilermaker Rick wrote:
Juice's Lecture Notes wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
If you expect your team to provide six runs of "support" every game, you're barking up the wrong tree.
Except there are 12 qualified MLB starters right now that average 6 RS/9 or better, and 30 that average 5 or better. The White Sox as a team average below 4, and average just more than 3 runs per 9 when Quintana is on the hill.
The White Sox offense is in the bottom half of the MLB in AVG, bottom-3rd in OBP, and bottom-quartile in SLG. It is the offense that sucks when Quintana is pitching, not the opposing pitcher being really good. If it were indeed that Quintana is just "bested" by better pitchers every time out, we would expect to see the Sox as an above-average team shut down by a great starter. They are not, they are a well-below-average offensive team.
What are the numbers?
In games that Quintana pitches, how much does he lower their runs scored from their average and how much does the opposing pitcher lower the runs scored of the White Sox?
The whole argument here is that the Sox, who are a bad offense, are even worse with Quintana pitching for some strange reason. The likely answer is that the other pitcher is outperforming him by shutting down the offense more than expected.
Show us the math!
"QOPP R/9" is "Quintana Opponents' Runs per 9 Innings", and "ROPP R/G" is "Real Opponents Runs per Game". The bottom in bold is an average of all teams (not including the inter-league split at the top), and as you can see, Quintana is able to limit opponent scoring to about 65% of their averages when extrapolated out to 9 innings. Without extrapolation, Quintana holds opponents to an average that is 47% of their regular marks.
The White Sox average 3.39 R/9 when Quintana is on the hill, and their average is 3.99 R/G. So, all told, the opposing pitchers are limiting White Sox output to 85% of their average.
The problem is that the Sox' offense is so bad, that even limiting it's run-scoring rate by 85% makes leaving the game after 5, 6, or 7 innings and change with a lead an even more daunting task if you give up even a single run. And that is why "Wins" is such an awful metric.
Interesting information. As JORR said, I think sample size may be an issues(especially with two shutouts against two of the best offenses he faced) but it looks like he does perform well against his opponent.