In baseball, pitching is the most important element in the game. The pitcher is charged with getting the ball over the plate for the hitter so that he can have an opportunity to hit it. If a pitcher gives up many walks or if he leaves many hits on base, his team will have more difficulty scoring runs against him in subsequent innings and may even lose some games as a result.
To help ensure that their pitchers have success and are not punished for having poor outings from time to time, every Major League Baseball team has a quality start system in place. A quality start is defined as any time a pitcher allows no more than three earned runs in any of three innings before allowing at least one earned run during the same interval.
To give you an idea of how significant this is, let’s take a look at how this would work in a standard six-inning game and how this would affect your team’s record if they were able to achieve it.
How a Quality Start System Works in Baseball
In a six-inning game, a quality start occurs if a pitcher allows no more than three earned runs in any of three innings before allowing at least one earned run during the same interval. If a team were to achieve this, they would have six outs to score as many runs as possible.
By comparison, a quality start system in baseball works the same way even if the game is only four innings long, but the team only gets four outs instead of six. In order to calculate the quality start total, each pitcher is assigned a quality start rating, with the highest possible score being 100.
Once the game begins, an official scorekeeper looks at each pitcher’s performance and records whether they allow any earned runs, how many earned runs they allow, how many hits they allow and how many walks they issue.
The official scorekeeper also calculates each pitcher’s quality start rating. This rating is simply the number of earned runs that the pitcher allows multiplied by 0.50, which is intended to give the official scorekeeper a little bit of leeway when assigning a quality start rating.
What is an Earned Run?
An earned run is defined as any run that is scored off of a pitcher and is counted by the official scorekeeper. The official scorerunner maintains the list of hits that the pitcher allows and how many walks he issues, and this information is used to calculate the number of runs that the pitcher allows.
For example, say that a pitcher walks five batters and allows one hit, but the hitter does not manage to get a base hit on that one hit. In this case, the official scorekeeper would count the batter as having walked to lead off the next inning, so the official score would be one run, but the runner would not score any runs because there is no one for him to reach base against.
If a pitcher allows three earned runs during the first inning of a game, the official scorekeeper will count those runs as three earned runs against that pitcher.
This means that the hitter who reached base against him and the runner who scored on that hit are credited with themselves having run the bases, and these two runs will be added to the score of the pitcher as well as to the runner’s base hit.
Thus, in this example, the pitcher would have allowed three earned runs and would have walked five batters, while the hitter would have walked to lead off the second inning and the runner would have scored on a base hit.
If the runner had a hit of his own in the next inning, the official scorekeeper would count that hit as well as the runner’s run and the hitter’s walk in the first inning, adding up to four runs for the pitcher and four for the hitter.
How to Achieve a Quality Start
We have outlined the quality start system in baseball and how it works in detail above, but let’s say that your team is playing in a game during which they have a quality start opportunity. In this case, your team would need to start the game by allowing no earned runs in any of three innings.
Next, your pitcher would have to allow no earned runs in the fourth inning and then would have to allow no earned runs in the fifth inning. To make sure that your team was able to achieve this, you would need a quality start system in place to make sure that your pitcher did not allow any earned runs during these three innings.
Benefits of a Quality Start System
When you are playing baseball and you find yourself in a game in which you have a quality start system at work, you want to make sure that you are maximizing your chances of coming out of the game with a win. One of the benefits of having a quality start system in place is that you are going to be more likely to win more games than you would be otherwise.
This is because you are going to be able to keep the runs from scoring against you, which means that your team is going to be able to score more runs than it would otherwise. If your team wins the game, you will be able to celebrate with your team and team members because you know that you came out of the game with a victory, which means that you all did something well.
Is a Quality Start Worth More Points?
For example, let’s say that your team has a quality start opportunity during a game. During this game, your pitcher does not allow any earned runs and walks three batters, while the other five batters he faces each get a hit. In this case, your team would get credit for a quality start and a quality start rating of 75, which means that you would get 1.5 bonus points.
Now let’s say that in this game, your pitcher allows four earned runs and walks six batters, while the other two batters he faces each get a hit. In this case, your team would get credit for a quality start and a quality start rating of 60, which means that you would get 1.0 bonus point. If you look closely, you will notice that these numbers are exactly the same.
This means that if your team was able to get a quality start during a game, you would get exactly the same number of bonus points if your pitcher allowed four earned runs as if he allowed one earned run, so there is no benefit to aiming for one or the other.
How to Determine if Your Team Has A Quality Start System?
Now that we have discussed how a quality start system works and what the benefits of having a quality start system are, let’s take a look at how you can determine if your team has a quality start system in place. The first thing you will want to do is to make sure that your official scorekeeper maintains a list of each and every run that your pitcher allows during each game.
You will also want to make sure that the official scorekeeper maintains a list of each and every walk that your pitcher issues during each game. If you are able to do these things, you will be able to determine if your team has a quality start system in place. Now that you know how to do this, simply make sure to take a look at the official scorekeeper’s list of each and every run that your pitcher allows and walk that your pitcher issues in each game.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that pitching is the most important aspect of baseball, and the pitcher has the most to lose if he allows many hits to get on base. The only way that they can prevent this is by throwing the ball as hard as possible while keeping their composure and preventing the batter from making solid contact.
If they do this, they can be sure that they will have success against the hitters, and they will not have to worry about getting any runs scored against them because they are going to make it very difficult for the batter to make solid contact, which means that the hitter is going to have to try to hit the ball hard, but he will not be able to make the solid contact that he needs to in order to be able to do so.
