Last season, I wrote an article titled “Avoiding the Disaster Start.” The Royals were 45 games into the season, floundering with a 14-31 record, and had recently gone through a stretch where the starting pitcher had failed to complete five innings and had given up more runs than innings pitched seven times out of nine starts. These starts we can call “disaster starts.” The article also defined other types of starts:
Disaster start (DS): fewer than 5 innings, more runs than innings (or at least eight runs allowed)
Weak start (WS): a start that doesn’t qualify as disaster, strong, or outstanding
Strong start (SS): Innings exceed runs by at least three but less than five
Outstanding start (OS): At least five more innings than runs allowed
These categories are meant to update the “quality start” metric to reflect a contemporary strategy for how deep starters go into games, as well as give more degrees of “quality.