Mumbai Memos: 38.011: Pure Quality Relief

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Mumbai Memos: 38.011: Pure Quality Relief

Post by HoosierVic » Mon Apr 08, 2019 6:10 pm

The Sabre's Point
A statistical blog of the Unified Middle Eastern Baseball Association

By Alvin Gale
Sabre’s Point Contributor

When last we met on the front page of this vaunted blog, I dropped on you the knowledge of Pure Quality Starts and how to figure them. At the end of my post, I said if you all asked nicely, I’d tell you about Pure Quality Relief.

You did, so I will!
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PQR is the creation of Patrick Davitt, a researcher/writer/podcaster who works with Fantasy Baseball expert Ron Shandler on the Baseball HQ website and on the annual Baseball Forecaster publication.

This stat, essentially, tries to do for relief appearances what PQS does for starts: give you a simple-to-figure tool for evaluating how a reliever performed. Like PQS, it uses a scale that ranges from 0 as the worst to 5 as the best.

Here’s how it’s figured, according to Baseball Forecaster:

1. Award two points for the first out recorded, and one point for each subsequent out, to a maximum of four points.
2. Award one point if a pitcher has at least one strikeout for every four outs he records (1 K for 1-4 outs; two K’s for 5-8 outs; etc.).
3. Award one point if he allows zero baserunners, but minus one point for every baserunner allowed. A pitcher is allowed an unpenalized runner for each three full outs, however (one baserunner for 3-5 outs; two baserunners for 6-8 outs; three for 9 outs, etc.). Unpenalized means they’re not docked a point, but they’re not awarded one, either. It’s a zero on the balance sheet.
4. Subtract one point for each earned run allowed, although allowing one unpenalized earned run for 8- or 9-out appearances.
5. Award an automatic PQR score of 0 for allowing a home run.

This is a bit clunkier system than PQS, I feel, but it’s one of the few quick and dirty stats around for evaluating relief outings. It’s especially useful because one or two bad outings can blow up a reliever’s ERA, say, and totally obscure a string of five, six, seven or more excellent outings. This was true of one of Mumbai’s better relievers, as you’ll see below.

PQR is useful, in other words, for detecting patterns.

There are oddities, though: it’s extremely easy for a reliever to score 6 points on the system’s 5-point scale: if you pitch a scoreless inning with 1 or more strikeouts and allow no baserunners … voila! You’ve scored 6 points. (2 points for out one, 1 point for out 2, 1 point for out 3, 1 point for the strikeout, and 1 point for allowing no runners)

In those cases, I’ve elected to simply award 5 points with an asterisk, which tells me it was a 5-plus outing. You could award 6 points, but I prefer keeping PQR scores parallel with PQS scores.

OK, now for the fun part.

I’ve figured the scores for each of the relief outings by the Mumbai Metro Stars bullpen through the games of May 19. I’ll just show the scores for the more heavily-used pitchers, sparing you some eye strain, but they’ll give you an idea of how the scores can be useful:

Sancho Ramírez: 4-5-5-2-5-3-5*-5-0-4-3-3-2-0-5*-1-4-0
Lyndon Rosebotham: 5-0-3-0-4-2-5-5*-5-5-5-5-4-0-0-5
Orlando Núñez: 4-5-3-3-3-4-4
Kevin Fowler: 4-0-1-3-0-0-4-5*-4-0-4-4
Tullio Brunelleschi: 0-1-5*-2-0-0-1-5-4-2-0-1
Rafael Cruz: 2-4-4-5-0-5-4-5*-4-5*-4-5*-4-5*-3-4-5

As you can see, the Metro Stars have some decent relievers … who occasionally set off the baseball equivalent of a giant stink bomb.

Kevin Fowler actually started the season as Mumbai’s closer, but was removed because he proved to be way too inconsistent. Tullio Brunelleschi was taken out of his setup role and relegated to middle and long relief for the same reason.

Rafael Cruz, as you can see, has had a string of good relief outings, although his 4.09 ERA doesn’t exactly thrill. The issue there is two-fold: he’s had a couple of bad outings as a starter, and his one disastrous outing in relief came on April 22 when he only lasted one-third of an inning and gave up a run.

I actually sent this data to Mumbai management awhile back, and now they're using Cruz as a closer. I like to think they used my figures.

Of course, I like to think a lot of things …

At any rate, it’s an odd little tool that Shandler and Davitt don’t actually seem to use much anymore, but I think it has some utility. Make of it what you will.

Later, all!

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