What if we reframed the ‘quality start’ metric into ‘high-quality starts?’: Sliders

The American League's most durable pitcher has an informal ranking system for starters' performance.

"You did your job at seven innings, six is the bare minimum, and if you get through five and get the W, that's a little participation trophy," said Seth Lugo , the Kansas City Royals' load-bearing right-hander. "Anything after seven, that's pretty quality. You're feeling good about yourself. That's a great day at the office."

Lugo had logged the most innings in the majors this season, 197 2⁄3, until he was passed on Thursday by Logan Webb of the San Francisco Giants (198 2⁄3). Naturally, those pitchers are among the major-league leaders in a statistic we'd love to popularize as a measure of durability and dominance: the high-quality start, or HQS.

You've probably heard of the "quality start," a metric created by Hall of Fame baseball writer John Lowe. For decades, the QS – at least six innings, no more than three earned runs – has long been useful in measuring a pitcher's effectiveness at keeping his team in the game.

Through Wednesday, teams had a .689 winning percentage when their pitcher makes a quality start, which translates to a 112-win pace across 162 games. The statistic, then, is quite revealing when viewed as a large sample.

But it suffers from its name. Because the minimum standard for a "quality" start equates to a 4.50 ERA, it's easy for critics to dismiss it with the accurate – if short-sighted – sentiment that 4.50 isn't quality. But what if we reframe the statistic by adjusting the requirements?

Behold the HQS: at least seven innings, no more than two earned runs. That comes to a 2.57 ERA, better than Cy Young himself. Through Wednesday, teams had a .802 winning percentage when their pitcher makes a high-quality start, a 130-win pace for a season.

Naturally, it's a lot harder to get an HQS than a QS. Through Wednesday, pitchers had made 1,678 quality starts this season, but only 31 percent of those (526) were high-quality starts. And while 36.7 percent of all MLB starts are quality starts, only 11.5 percent meet the HQS standards.

Here are the HQS leaderboards, by team and by pitcher:

A few fascinating tidbits:

– The playoff-bound Cleveland Guardians rely so heavily on their bullpen that they actually have the fewest HQS of any team in the majors: only 6 all season, by Tanner Bibee (2), Joey Cantillo (1) Ben Lively (1), Triston McKenzie (1) and Gavin Williams (1). The Marlins and the Rays are tied for the next fewest, with eight apiece.

– Last year's AL Cy Young winner, the New York Yankees' Gerrit Cole , missed the first two and a half months with elbow inflammation and has zero HQS. He has not pitched beyond the sixth inning in any of his 15 starts.

– Arizona's Zac Gallen , who finished third in the NL Cy Young race last season, has zero HQS. He's been steady (12-6, 3.61 in 26 starts) but not stand-out. The Diamondbacks have only 10 HQS overall, same as the dreadful Chicago White Sox and also-ran Washington Nationals .

– The Los Angeles Dodgers have 18 HQS, but only three from pitchers now active: two from Yoshinobu Yamamoto , who has thrown a pair of four-inning starts since missing nearly three months with a rotator cuff strain, and one from Jack Flaherty , who did it Sept. 8 in his only seven-inning start of the season.

– Toronto 's José Berríos has been the stealth star of the season. Yes, he's given up a lot of homers, he didn't make the All-Star team and he's been shelled (at least five earned runs) five times. But he's finishing with a flurry: in his last seven starts, Berrios is 7-0 with a 1.51 ERA and five of his 12 HQS, which is more than nine entire teams.

– The Los Angeles Angels , who will likely finish last in the AL West for the first time since 1999, have more high-quality starts (15) than the Yankees (14), who have the AL's best record. But Angels veteran Tyler Anderson has eight, and the only other pitcher with more than two, Jose Soriano , was shut down for the season with arm fatigue in mid-August.

– The Giants' Blake Snell (the deserving first-half NL Cy Yuk) has been so overpowering since the All-Star break that he's sometimes been too dominant for an HQS. Five times, he's worked at least six shutout innings, with 10 or more strikeouts and fewer than three hits allowed. But in three of those games, Snell threw so many pitches that the Giants pulled him before he could get through seven.

Lugo has an MLB-best 10 outings with at least seven innings and no more than one earned run, though we don't have a name for that, sadly. He said he prides himself on economizing pitches and dispatching hitters quickly.

"Al Jackson used to always say: 'After three pitches, they should be on first base or in the dugout,'" Lugo said, referring to a pitcher from the original 1962 Mets who coached for many years in their farm system.

"I can go out there and try to strike everybody out, but it's 50 pitches through two or three innings, and you're kind of grinding to get through five or six. You put a lot of pressure on your bullpen that way, and you're given the hitters a lot of pitches to see, which doesn't help whoever pitches after you."

"Just throw one on the corner and try to get a ground ball. It's a lot easier. And then it also saves your best sequences for when you've got some guys in scoring position with less than two outs."

The master of the HQS, however, is Webb, last season's MLB leader in innings pitched, with 216. Like Lugo, Webb has the stuff to get strikeouts but prides himself on durability .

"Any time you go seven with two runs or less, you're putting your team in a good chance to win, and that's really all I'm trying to do when I go out there," Webb told The Athletic's Andrew Baggarly. "There's times when I probably hurt myself a little bit trying to go for something like that or trying to get the extra inning, but I really just want to go out there (for) our team."

Webb explained that he always feels a duty to pitch deep into games, especially with the Giants' relievers carrying a heavy burden this season. No Giant besides Webb has worked 125 innings this season, and his 3.58 ERA, while respectable, might be lower with different priorities.

"There's also a part of me that wishes I had a couple more six-inning outings where I gave up zero," Webb said. "I think there's that happy medium – but, yeah, it's what I try to do and I'm happy that it's something I've been able to do."

It won't be enough to win Webb his first Cy Young Award, not with the seasons Sale and Wheeler have had in the NL East. But it's worthy of a Sliders salute, anyway, as the major-league leader in great days at the office.

The best $25,000 Cleveland ever spent

How a 1991 waiver claim keeps on giving for the Guardians

It was late in spring training, 33 years ago, when John Hart, Cleveland's director of baseball operations, spent $25,000 to claim a Class-A catcher named Ed Taubensee off waivers from the Oakland A's.

"He's a big, strong left-handed hitter with power," Hart told The Plain Dealer at the time. "We want to take a look at him."

They looked at Taubensee for just 26 major-league games in 1991, when he batted .242 with no home runs. But all these years later, the team still benefits from that humble waiver claim. It shows up now in closer Emmanuel Clase , who could become the first reliever ever to lead the majors in saves for three consecutive seasons (since the statistic was created in the 1960s).

Clase, who has 46 saves and a 0.63 ERA through Thursday, is the latest standout from a remarkably productive string of trades spanning decades:

April 4, 1991: Cleveland claims Taubensee off waivers from Oakland.

Dec. 10, 1991: Cleveland trades Taubensee and Willie Blair to Houston for Kenny Lofton and David Rohde.

March 25, 1997: Cleveland trades Lofton and Alan Embree to Atlanta for Marquis Grissom and David Justice.

June 29, 2000: Cleveland trades Justice to New York (AL) for Zach Day, Ricky Ledee and Jake Westbrook.

July 31, 2010: Cleveland trades Westbrook to St. Louis; St. Louis trades Ryan Ludwick to San Diego; San Diego trades Nick Greenwood to St. Louis and Corey Kluber to Cleveland.

Dec. 15, 2019: Cleveland trades Kluber to Texas for Emmanuel Clase and Delino DeShields.

In all, Cleveland got five players who were essential to deep postseason runs: Lofton (1995 World Series), Grissom and Justice (1997 World Series), Westbrook (2007 ALCS) and Kluber (2016 World Series).

Now the Guardians hope Clase – who helped them reach a division series two years ago – will be the next. He's already a strong example of how smartly spinning off stars can help keep a low-payroll franchise competitive.

"It's hard to link every (trade) back, because sometimes there's a break in the link," said Guardians general manager Mike Chernoff, who was in grade school when the Taubensee claim started the chain reaction.

"But organizationally – over the past 20 years where the economic landscape has changed in Cleveland – that is how we have had to build teams. So in some ways, we know that's the reality: Kluber contributed a massive amount here, but eventually we got to a point where we had to trade him and hopefully turn him into something that's great. And Clase wasn't Clase at that time, but he's turned himself into that.

"You keep churning it, but it's amazing, and it's something we talk about all the time."

Gimme Five

Five bits of ballpark wisdom

Jeff Hoffman on making your postseason debut

Jeff Hoffman had played for four organizations, turned 30 years old and nearly signed in Japan before finally making his postseason debut last fall with the Philadelphia Phillies . A vital member of Rob Thomson's bullpen, Hoffman worked in eight of the Phillies' 13 playoff games, allowing two runs, five hits and a walk in seven innings, with nine strikeouts.

He was hurt only twice, both times on sliders – a homer to Atlanta 's Austin Riley in the division series and a go-ahead single by Arizona's Gabriel Moreno in Game 7 of the NLCS. He worked over the winter on making his slider more consistent and wound up in his first All-Star appearance, with a 1.73 ERA through Thursday.

With many major leaguers about to experience October baseball for the first time, Hoffman gave some thoughts on what to expect.

Season-long buzz really helps. "It's definitely a trick to be out there and tell yourself it's just another game. Obviously the stakes are a little higher, but we were all so caught up in what was at hand that I don't remember putting any more stake into it than I do any other game. I think our crowd here does a good job preparing us for the postseason, because the fans are into it year-round. Last year was the first time I'd ever really seen that. Playing through September in meaningful games until we clinched, that all felt like it did in October. So getting those experiences earlier in the season going into the postseason definitely helped. They make every game feel like a playoff game."

It gets loud. Really loud. "Arizona can get a little weirder because you can close the roof and kind of trap the sound in, so it really feels like your ears are ringing at the end of the night when you lay down in bed. But here, I don't think the loudness can be matched, when you try to compare it to our crowd and our fan base."

Be ready for anything. "Our bullpen is pretty much all hands on deck all the time. So there's not much more you can throw on us. We're all pretty much prepared for (stuff) to hit the fan every inning. So if we're all bought into that, we have a pretty good success rate."

Nobody cares about postseason stats. "Once you get to a playoff series, the only thing that matters is if you win them. I don't think I've ever gone back and looked at my postseason numbers. All that matters is that we lost in the NLCS, and this year we'll have (another) chance to win. When the (sample is) that little, the numbers are so inflated it doesn't even matter anyway. If you give up two runs and you win 3-2, who cares? All that matters is that your team comes out on top."

There's no way to prepare for the end. "When you get that far, you just expect to keep playing. You're trying to get to that next day, next day, and when it stops and you know you're not gonna see these guys every day for the rest of the year, it makes you burn. It makes you want to come back stronger the next year. I don't think we're over it. At all. We'll be over it when we win the World Series."

Off the Grid

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

John Candelaria, 40+ WAR, Minnesota Twins

On Monday, as he watched New York Mets lefty Sean Manaea face a lefty hitter, Washington's James Wood , SNY broadcaster Keith Hernandez made an apt comparison.

"You can see right now these young hitters, these left-handers – and I'm speaking from my own experience – (the) sidearmer reminds me of John Candelaria, the Pittsburgh Pirate and New York native," Hernandez said. "It's tough."

On cue, Manaea dropped down and whipped a high, 96-mph fastball past Wood for strike three.

Hernandez was an MVP and batting champion who hit over .300 against left-handed Cy Young winners like Vida Blue, Steve Carlton, Randy Jones and Fernando Valenzuela. But of the 17 pitchers he faced at least 70 times, Hernandez reached base least often against Candelaria: a meager .274 OBP to go with a .244 average.

The Grid asked for a Minnesota Twin with 40 career WAR on Monday, and the well-traveled Candelaria, as he so often is, was an answer. In 19 seasons, from 1975 to 1993, the 6-foot-7 high school hoops star played mostly for the Pirates , but also seven other teams.

Six are somewhat easy to remember: both New York teams, both Los Angeles-area teams, and both Canadian teams (at the time). Minnesota, where Candelaria stopped in for the first half of the 1990 season, is the other.

Candelaria earned his 41.9 career WAR with a fascinating career in which he was 50 games over .500 (177-122) with a 3.33 ERA. His early years included a no-hitter in 1976, a 20-win season in 1977 and a championship in 1979, when he beat the Orioles – and the great Jim Palmer – while facing elimination in Baltimore in Game 6 of the World Series.

He also endured his share of tragedy. As a minor leaguer in 1974, Candelaria was pitching in Salem. Va., when a young teammate, Alfredo Edmead, was killed in an outfield collision . In 1985, his young son died after months in a coma following a swimming pool accident the previous Christmas.

Candelaria also struggled with alcohol problems and had multiple DUI arrests during his career, including one he later blamed on a teammate, Don Sutton, for supposedly setting him up . Before those issues surfaced, though, Candelaria was often portrayed as a quirky, mercurial carouser, quick with a colorful quote.

"Life is to enjoy," he told Sports Illustrated in 1982 . "It's a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved."

Classic Clip

"Walk of Life" by Dire Straits

With the Milwaukee Brewers on the verge of clinching the NL Central on Tuesday, this clip surfaced on an X post from : catcher Ted Simmons leaping into the arms of closer Rollie Fingers as the franchise clinched its first playoff berth.

The moment, from October 3, 1981 , also appears near the end of the video for "Walk of Life," a feel-good hit for the British band Dire Straits in 1985. The song is not about sports, but clips from MLB, the NFL and NBA are spliced at a rapid pace throughout.

Mark Knopfler, the singer, songwriter and lead guitarist, came up with the idea, according to a syndicated from 1985.

"He thought the sports scenes would be an amusing parallel to the song," a producer, Simon Field, told Knight-Ridder Newspapers. "And people simply like watching sports."

Among the players with quick cameos are Tug McGraw, Rick Dempsey, Ivan Calderon, a very young Roger Clemens, Harold Baines, Wade Boggs, Larry Bowa, Oscar Gamble, Bucky Dent, Gary Matthews, Kevin Saucier and someone on the Mariners with a baseball in his mouth. It's mostly bloopers and pratfalls until the end, when it's champagne, cheering fans, touchdown dances – and Simmons jumping on Fingers.

"And after all the violence and double-talk, there's just a song in all the trouble and the strife..."

(Top photo of Seth Lugo: Ed Zurga/)