Quality start

[5] Baseball-Reference.com also includes quality starts, tough losses, and cheap wins for individual pitchers under Pitching-Advanced Stats-Starting Pitching.

[6] † denotes that the player is an inductee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York † denotes that the player is an inductee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York As of the end of the 2014 season, the highest "quality start" percentage for a given season in the live-ball era (post-1920) was recorded by Greg Maddux, who had 24 of them in 25 games in 1994.

Bob Gibson, however, set a new high mark with 26 quality starts in a row (no relief appearances) from September 12, 1967 to July 30, 1968.

[8] In 2022, American League, Framber Valdez pitched 25 quality starts in a row from April 25 to September 18 of the 2022 season.

"[15] That the category is more reliable in the aggregate can be seen with countervailing individual examples, such as the ones listed by Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski in a 2011 piece on the subject:[16] On the other hand, in the 21st century, team management has increasingly looked upon complete games with disfavor due to the clear and convincing evidence that a pitcher left in the game for more than six or perhaps seven innings is both less effective and at substantially increased risk of injury.

Nolan Ryan has used the term "high quality start" for games where the pitcher goes seven innings or more and allows three earned runs or fewer,[3] which baseball columnist and former BBWAA president Derrick Goold referred to as "quality start plus".

[19] This stat would award a pitcher with a dominant start if he goes at least eight innings, and allows no more than one run, earned or unearned.