Chicago Cubs: The interesting tenure of Jose Quintana

Chicago Cubs: Breaking down Quintana’s outings

Friday afternoon marked the 72nd start for Quintana in a Cubs uniform. Thirty-six of those starts, exactly half, have been quality starts. In fact he and Jon Lester have exactly the same numbers of quality starts (27) going back to the beginning of 2018. Both trail Kyle Hendricks by four in that span. Obviously the types of quality starts vary (number of shutouts, one, two or three-run games and innings pitched) but it still speaks volumes.

What had caused the numbers of his overall body of work to bloat have been the occasional awful outings. Since joining the Cubs, eight of Quintana’s starts have resulted in giving up six or more earned runs. He sports a 14.37 ERA in those games. Two of those eight starts have come this year and his season ERA would be 3.10 had those two outings been deleted off the game log page.

This was a somewhat similar case last season when he had a 4.03 ERA and 4.43 FIP in 32 starts, 13 of them being quality starts.  While he has overall been much better this year, the body of work last year saw more decent/good than bad. There was just enough bad to make 2018 an average season for him.