So get this: sometime back in the stone ages when there was just Pets.com and only one Matrix movie, some guy named Clint “Command Strip” Feverback invented the Quality Start. Legend has it that Clint was having beers in his garage while listening to the game on the radio, where Matt Cain was on his way to another 4-12 season with a 2.83 ERA. Clint chugged a beer in honor of failing fantasy baseball team, which also fared pretty well in the ERA and WHIP categories but just couldn’t muster enough Wins to, well, win. Fed up with finishing second place to his junior high school bandmate and future boss at the shrimp canning factory Tyler Stilwicky — who just trotted out Yankees pitcher after Yankee pitcher and dominated the Wins and Saves categories — Clint decided to invent a statistic so unassailable in its statistical fortitude that fantasy baseballers for the next century would consider it superior to the Win. Thus, the Quality Start was born in that garage, after Clint’s first six-pack but before his first heart attack.
And twenty years later, us fantasy baseballers still have no freaking clue what to do about the quality start. So let’s jump in fears first and see if we can do anything to celebrate — or even prognosticate — the legacy that Clint “Command Strip” Feverback left us.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
