As of this writing, Part 3 of The Eighteenth Out literally went out to the public less than an hour ago and I’m already back in the lab, ready to see where our latest exciting correlative discovery may take us. Nothing like a good statistical breakthrough to start the week, am I right?  If you’re just joining me on my exploration through time and sports you can catch up on the foundations for this work here (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  I am so genuinely stoked about the path we’ve found ourselves on, that yesterday afternoon I almost asked the girl at the pork store if she could believe that Quality Starts were so highly correlated to Starting Pitcher End of Season Position Ranks in Fantasy Point Leagues (exhale). I mean at this point it had to be all over social media, right? Trending worldwide? Would I be dodging swaths of sabermetric paparazzi on my way back to the car?  Well, it was not, I was not and I didn’t even end up asking her. I just took my hot soppressata and left (it’s pronounced soo-pah-sad for all my non Brooklyn born baseball lovers).

Now that I’ve successfully referenced my favorite cultural salted meat, its time to get back to work.  To quickly recap, we left off with all Starting Pitchers in 2018 with at least 20 Quality Starts (15 Players) and tested for correlation with that pitcher’s finishing rank by position in each format…