"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.

you are not factoring in the guys who did start and got qs that would come from those innings....basically you just have a totally f*cked way about going about this

the idea is that the mets had 101 quality starts...you should not be looking at dickeys 17 and divying them up but rather calculating how many they can be expected to net from each pitcher

lets start out by giving niese & harvey 32 starts each...that is 74 starts to begin

lets say gee bounces back, pitches the whole year out of the rotation, and also throws 32 starts (a bit optimistic): now we are at 106 starts between those three

that leaves 56 starts to be made up of some combination of johan, marcum, wheeler, mejia, mchugh, & other spot starters

niese and gee both threw QS in about 70% of their starts last year...harvey was at 60% but for the sake of argument, lets say he gets up to 70 % as well... that would bean that we'd be notching b/t 70-75 qs between those 3 guys....meaning we would need the remaining pitchers to throw quality starts in 25-30 of the remaining 56 games or a qs% of b/t 44-54%

now some may disagree that gee will be healthy, niese will repeat his success from last year, or that harvey will take that step forward but i dont think any of those things are really that crazy to take as assumptions....but really the question becomes, do we get enough out of the other 2 spots in the rotation to cover those 25-30 starts...im not really weighing in either way but THAT is the argument you should be having bc what you're arguing right now doesnt really make any sense bc you are not considering it in the larger context

also as a side note, im not sold that marcum will be a part of this team in aug....i think the goal is to trade both him and santana and have wheeler and one other minor leaguer out of the guys that are at that top level in mejia/familia/mchugh/etc to take up the other role

but if they dont see anything promising from those guys, they could hold onto marcumand wait for one of the younger guys to progress

but then again, there are always injuries to take into consideration as well....which is why projections for team stats are so difficult

Far enough

Here are what we got

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%

So Neise we will keep the same 22
Gee had 12 but should have what 19 over a full season?
Santana had 10, That 48% should be alot better because he fell apart after getting stepped on, so 15 over 25?

Havey had 10 if we use his % and he gets 30 starts that is 18
Marcum had what 12 of 17? (going from memory) so call it 20 if he gets 30 starts

Neise 22
Santana 15
Harvey 18
Marcum 20
Gee 19
Spot starters 6

So that is 100

And that is not factoring in what Wheeler might do.

I guess it will depend on them contending or not.

first of all,

i dont think marcum is getting 20....that would be a far better QS% than hes had in years

second of all, i dont know why you are going backwards

i already calculated what you could reasonable expect from harvey, niese, & gee

you are simply supposed to be doing the calculations for the last 2 spots in the rotation to see if they can match the necessary QS's needed to reach 101....you are making this more complicated then it has to be

I do my own math and caculations thanks:>)

yea but they are difficut to follow .... i am showing you an easier n more effective appoachbc you have to show that its not about replacing dickeys qs's but creating a more stable overall rotation that over the course of 162 games canpost a better overall qs%, starting w/ productive and full years from the 3 central cogs of the rotation that arent likely to be traded in niese gee and harvey...like i said, if you can get 70% QS rates from those 3 guys (and really niese and gee both did that and harvey wasnt far off) over full seasons, then you are not really asking a ton from the remaining 2 spots in the rotation....then it is just calculating the relative QS%'s of each pitcher that will occupy each respective spot for however long you predict they will occupy it plus whatever the QS% of the starts that are relegated to spot starters, or the "6th man" in the rotation

example

if we were to go w/ the idea that each of those guys puts up an average 70% QS rate over 32 starts each, you start w/ 67 quality starts

if santana makes 16 starts before injury/traded and is able to record even an average say 56% QS rate, you are talking about an additional 9 QS, bumping it to 76 QS w/ 50 starts remaing

if marcum starts 20 starts before being traded (as i predict he will) w/ a similar QS%, you are talkinga about rougly 11-12 more QS, marking around 87-88 QS w/ 30 starts remaing

If Wheeler takes over for Santana and is allowed to make even 10 starts before being shut down and records QS in 50% of them (which i think is reasonable - more than that might be a stretch bc of innings limits) that is another 5 QS w/ 20 starts remaining (92-3 overall QS)

now this is where it gets iffy

of those 20 remaining starts, you will likely have starts made by mejia, mchugh, hefner, & perhaps others.....i think a conservative approach would be to say that roughly 1/3 of those will be converted into QS...meaning roughly 7 additional QS....bringing the grand total by these calculations to the 99-100 range....meaning, it is reasonable to expect a similar overall number of QS & QS % from last year...if we get solid production from the 5th spot in the rotation in the 2nd half or wheeler hits the ground running (or one of marcum or santana has a good year or even simply performs at the estimated level and is not traded) then it is possible that they exceed last years total....however, there is also certainly a case to be made that they won't get to that number

now, i expect you to have a bit more of an optimistic approach to these calculations but the most effective way to argue your point is to essentially use the model i laid out above but just subbing in your particular expectations

I see, Makes a lot of sense. That really speaks to how bad the pen was just think if we had a half way decent pen how many of those QS that did not get a W might we have won.

some was pen, some was offense

yup there were a couple guys that were so far below average they took the entire offense down.

And last in Quality Closes?

If Santana can be a middle of the rotation starter & if we can get at least league average production from our bullpen, I bet we win a few more games than last year.

The bad news is the bullpen is still a disgrace.

They have had recent success. Hard to get lower than last. Point is starters should win at least 75% of quality starts with a decent bullpen. That would translate into 75 wins for the starters. You are right to focus on the bullpen. For better or worse, our success hinges on their effectiveness.

Parnell, Lyon, Atchison, Feliciano, Hawkins, Laffey, Edgin, Francisco is potentially a much better group. Fingers crossed.

the combination of TDA & Buck has as much hr power as hairston and as I thought I made pretty clear above, its not unreasonable that the pitching will be comparable even w/ the loss of dickey bc the REST of the rotation will likely be improved...might still be a down grade but, unless you think what i stated above is just totally off the mark (and id like to hear why on each point) i dont see the rotation as a major down grade

the bull pen is still a big question and the of is a joke but in general i dont really see this team being any worse than last year

actually, simply bc the marlins are basically non-factors and the phillies are aging drastically (particularly if lee & halladay don't have bounce back years) they may very well be fighting it out for 3rd w/ the mets