We no longer have 20 of them.

Marcum said he's gonna replace 'em though..

Of course, Dickey all by himself had 27 of the team's 101 quality starts. And a ridiculous QS% of 82% (league average is 62%). That will be tough to replace. Niese looks good, though!

Here are the numbers, courtesy of Baseball Reference

QS  QS%
R.A. Dickey 27 82%
Jonathon Niese* 22 73%
Dillon Gee 12 71%
Chris Young 12 60%
Johan Santana* 10 48%
Jeremy Hefner 8 62%
Matt Harvey 6 60%
Mike Pelfrey 2 67%
Miguel Batista 1 20%
Collin McHugh 1 25%

Marcum had 12 QS (57%). So, Marcum replaces Young well enough. Have to hope Harvey + maybe Wheeler at midseason come close to replacing Dickey....

Good news then.

:)

Really astonishing that Dickey (who in theory only pitches every 5th day, i.e. 20% of the games) had more than 26% of the team's quality starts.

So, not only was he doing his own job exceptionally well, he was doing at least 6-7% of someone else's job, too! Talk about "giving 107%!"

Short-term loss, long-term gain. Dickey's my favorite player in the game, but trading him was definitely the right move for the Mets. It's just too bad the Mets didn't have the post-knuckleball Dickey around when they had the other pieces to contend. Sure could have used him in... say... 2006-2008.

Timing is everything.

It's not as surprising when you consider Dickey lead baseball with 27.

It also shows just how bad the pen was.

No I hear ya...but I'm on the other side of the fence. Not going to go down that road with you, but time will tell if it was the right decision.

Bottom line, TDA's got some big shoes to fill.

Some of those pitching stretches in the first half between Santana and Dickey were incredible..

27 of 101 is very close 27% which considering it is a five man rotation should not be the hardest thing to replace.

Remember Harvery had 6 for 60% of his games, He had 10 starts, If his % remains the same and he gets 30 starts that is 18, There is 12, Leaving 15, If marcum gets 10 or so we are then left needing 5, Santana not getting stepped on and falling apart the last 6 plus games can cover that,

ok saz thats fine but what you arent getting about dickey is the absurdly low amt of games that he threw that were NOT quality starts

there are a finite number of games to be played....no one is replacing that qs% so don't make that your argument

what you would really want to do (if you want to spend the time) to make your argument is look at each position in the rotation essentially w/ an added 6th man for spot starts that fall outside of the regular 5 and figure out the qs% of each and then the overall QS% for the team and try to argue (if its even possible) that the changes to the rest of the rotation should allow for an over all higher QS%for the starts not made by dickey, which would result in a similar overall QS% even w/ a significantly reduced % coming out of dickeys slot in the rotation

By my calculation, that leaves 51 quality starts lost in 84 starts or about 60%. The four starters returning were 50QS out of 78 or 65% and that includes Santana's 48% after a miserable last 8 starts. No matter how you slice it, we lost a great pitcher and dumped a couple of bums. Those additional starts go to Santana 10, Marcum 30, Harvey 20 and Gee 10, Spot starters 14.

The good news is we had pretty good starters last year and maybe this years group will be just as good. Now any improvement over the disgraceful bullpen we had last year, makes this team better than last years version.

"Bottom line, TDA's got some big shoes to fill. "

Good thing for D'Arnaud that he only has to fill 1/3 of those shoes by himself. Syndegaard and Decerra will (eventually) help fill them, too.

"Some of those pitching stretches in the first half between Santana and Dickey were incredible."
No kidding.

Why?

If all things were dead even and the other four starters that made up the five man rotation pit5ched as good as he did he would have had 20%, He had 26/27%, So he had a little more then 1/4 of the QS instead of 1/5th is the QS were evenly spread out.

If you look at any team the ace of the staff is going to have the highest % of QS, And when you consider the junk we had out there in the number five spot it is to be expected.

He had 27, How many will Marcum have? Marcum in a hitters park had 12 out of 21 so lets say he gets 28 starts that is 17 QS, We need to make up 10,

Harvey had 6 in 10 starts, He will get what 28 30? call it 28 that is atleast 16 if not more, There is the 10

Our number five starters were horrid and I doubt even had one, Gee had 12 in 17 startsif he gets 26 starts that is 18, There is the positive QS

Not hard to get

Marcum makes up 17
Harvey for a full season can make up 10

Gee over the mess that was a number five 6, But heck call it three

that is 30, Id call that a net gain.