RESEARCH: Pitch Counts and PQS

Intro

Many fantasy owners believe it is wise to sit a starting pitcher after a high-workload game because his next-game performance is bound to suffer from the lingering effects of fatigue.

New research from BaseballHQ.com strongly calls into question that belief. Indeed, the opposite might be true—we should be starting pitchers who have high-pitch-count (PC) starts, especially high-PQS (Pure Quality Starts) efforts, because they increase the likelihood of a solid performance the next time out.

Method

We began by compiling all the PQS records from the last three full seasons (2010-12). We put this raw PQS data of these 14,252 pitcher-starts into a master table and eliminated starts that were a pitcher’s first in a season because there...

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