Quick, who’s the pitcher with the best fWAR in all of MLB this season? If you said Cleveland’s Corey Kluber, you’ve probably been doing your homework. Some of you may have also said, “Who the hell is Corey Kluber?” If you’re part of the second group, welcome to the homework. And while we’re here, I’ll throw another name at both groups; Jose Quintana.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new pitching conversation in the AL Central. When you think about starting pitching in the Central, you think about names like Verlander, Scherzer, Sanchez, Shields and Sale. Yet who’s been more valuable in terms of fWAR than pitchers such as Madison Bummgarner, Sonny Gray and Zack Grienke? Why Jose Quintana of the Chicago White Sox, of course. Quintana also has a better WHIP than the mighty Verlander, who has been absolutely shelled over his past few starts.
What exactly makes these two so good? Well for Kluber it’s strikeouts. Kluber sits in fifth place in all of baseball in terms of K/9, with a mark of 10.28. He sits behind, in ascending order, Yu Darvish, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and the injured Jose Fernandez. That’s pretty good company. He’s also walking 2.11 batters per nine innings, and has a total WHIP of 1.27. That seems a bit high, no? Well part of that is he pitches in front of one of the worst defenses in all of baseball, as evidenced by the huge .350 BABIP that opposing hitters can lay claim to. So according to FIP (fielding independent pitching) and xFIP (modified FIP with tweaked home run expectancy), Kluber’s 3.10 ERA should look a bit more like 2.22 (FIP) or 2.70 (xFIP). That’s more what you would expect from someone who has Kluber’s strikeout numbers.
Quintana isn’t on the level that Kluber has been pitching at, but he’s been a model of consistency ever since he came up in 2012. Here are Quintana’s ERAs by season from then to now: 3.76, 3.51 and 3.61. He’s actually underperforming his FIP and xFIP this year, with respective marks of 3.02 and 3.37. So why haven’t we heard of this guy, who’s a very strong #2 to Chris Sale?
Well, mostly because he doesn’t win a whole lot of games. Despite pitching a full season’s worth of games last year (33 starts), Quintana only went 9-7. That’s a TON of no-decisions; pitchers with ERAs that good almost always find themselves with double digit wins. In fact, Quintana lead baseball with 17 no-decisions last year, mostly due to a lack of run support from last year’s anemic White Sox offense. And while the Sox currently rank third in the sport in runs scored, Quintana still finds himself on the ugly end of .500 with a 3-4 record.
It’s things like this that make the way we look at baseball so outdated. Quintana is clearly a fine pitcher, yet because his win-loss total isn’t anything to write home about, Quintana doesn’t get a ton of recognition by the fans or larger sports outlets. I don’t like to use fantasy as a method of talking about players from an analytical standpoint, but for Quintana it’s an excellent barometer of fan appreciation.
I play in an ESPN league, one of the more popular formats. I’m one of just the 9.2% to own Quintana. He was one of my final selections in my 14-team draft, and when I discovered he was still available I was shocked. How could someone so good fall so far in the draft? Quintana was actually one of the players I had in mind as a sleeper pick coming into the draft (one of the others, Brian Dozier, seems to have panned out well enough) but even the pre-draft rankings seemed to just not care about him.
Corey Kluber was another one of those guys I thought about grabbing. The Indians have been horrible this year, no question. Yet Kluber’s 5-3 record, while over .500, is still rather unfair to him. He took a loss in his first start, arguably one he really deserved. In his third start, he went 7.1 innings while only allowing two earned runs. On May 4th, he went eight innings and gave up only one earned run, and settled for another no-decision.
It’s truly shameful how much weight is thrown into wins and losses. Jeff Samrardzija owns an ERA under 2, and only just earned his first win due to bad defense and bad hitting by the Cubs. Yet nobody has denied his prowess this year. Why do we as fans, and as those who cover the game, allow free passes to someone like Samardzija yet look to wins and losses as soon as we talk about someone who isn’t as obviously an ace? And while I wouldn’t call Quintana an ace, he’s certainly a more than capable starter who is consistently good.
If we are to truly appreciate the game, we owe it to ourselves to understand the game. The first step is digging past archaic statistics such as pitcher wins, and look at what pitchers are really doing. Is it Corey Kluber’s fault that his offense did not back him? Of course not. Yet there it is, a loss on his record for that game. Of course, two months from now, it’s unlikely that the casual fan will look at Kluber’s record and think to themselves, “Hmmm, well one of those losses is that eight-inning one-run effort, so it doesn’t really count.”
So do your homework, folks. Not only will you learn something, but you’ll become a better fan. Learn about teams besides your own. Learn about stats that you’re unfamiliar with. It’ll help you appreciate the game more, and watch the game with a more critical eye. Plus, it’s damn interesting.
Class dismissed.
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