TV Guide has named Diana Rigg the sexiest TV star of all time. One of my other non-baseball vices is The Avengers so this pleases me to no end.

. . .

Two stats I like to look at are PQS and Qmax. Each of these measures a pitcher’s effectiveness on a game-by-game basis. Let’s see how Germano does:

PQS No.
  5 11
  4  5
  3 12
  2  1
  1  0
  0  1

Ron Shandler, who created PQS, also has something he calls dominant (DOM) and disaster (DIS) starts. The former are starts that register a PQS of 4 or 5, while the latter are those that register a 0 or 1. By this measure, Germano had 16 dominant starts and just 1 disaster. Put another way, 53% of his starts fell into the dominant range, while just 3% were disasters. And it should be noted that the lone disaster was his final start of the season.

Just for the sake of comparison, here are some big-leaguers who have had similar DOM and DIS percentages in recent years:

Name         Year DOM DIS
Dempster,Ry  2000  55   3
Kile,Da      2001  59   3
Leiter,Al    2000  58   6
Moyer,Ja     2001  52   6
Schilling,Cu 2000  59   3

Again, none of this is meant to suggest how Germano might devleop, but rather is intended to give an idea of how his performance in 2002 relative to his environment stacks up against some recent seasons by big-league hurlers.

How about Qmax? Here’s how that breaks out:

GS    S    C    T SS ES HH PP TJ SF
30 4.03 2.47 6.50 47 20 27  0 20 17

So what the heck does this mean? It’s pretty esoteric stuff, especially all the two-letter codes at the right. For more on those, I refer you to the Qmax Glossary. While you’re digesting that, I’ll throw out Germano’s actual numbers broken down according to category of start:

     G   IP  H  R ER HR BB SO  ERA BB/9 SO/9 BB/SO HR/9
SS  14 69.2 44 14 14  4 10 57 1.81 1.29 7.36 5.70  0.52
ES   6 45.0 27  8  8  3  5 40 1.80 1.00 8.00 8.00  0.68
HH   8 43.0 70 29 25  3  8 32 5.36 1.71 6.86 4.00  0.65

First off, it should be noted that the Qmax tool was developed to measure the performance of big-league starters. I have no idea whether or how well it translates to minor-leaguers. I still think it’s interesting to look at because, well, to be completely honest with you, I have a fascination with numbers that transcends reason.

But beyond that, we may be able to learn something from looking at Germano’s performance in this light. First, he has impeccable control. Sure, but we already knew that from the 27 walks in 190.2 innings. So the 2.47 command number merely reinforces what we already knew.

But if we look at some of the other numbers (and I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of this stuff, because as I’ve said, it’s pretty esoteric), there are a few items worth noting. First, on a game-by-game basis, Germano’s hit prevention wasn’t all that great. He allowed fewer hits than innings pitched in just under half of his starts. This isn’t shocking given his high hit total for the season. But what’s intriguing is the fact that when he was able to keep the hit totals down, he frequently kept them way down (those are the six starts categorized as "ES").

Well, on further reflection, I’m not sure that we can learn a lot from looking at these breakdowns so much as reinforce what Germano’s seasonal stats already indicate: He is an extreme finesse pitcher. What interests me most is that despite this fact, Germano has shown the ability to dominate hitters over the course of an individual game. Whether this is a case of a polished pitcher taking advantage of inexperienced batters or of a kid who knows how to pitch starting to grow into his body and build velocity remains to be seen.

In parting, I’ll leave you to take a look at some big-league performances of the past decade that are similar to what Germano did this year (data gathered from Big Bad Baseball Annual 2000):

Name          Year GS    S    C    T SS ES HH PP TJ SF
Benes,An      1992 34 3.91 2.62 6.53 56 24 32  3 15 --
Brown,Ke      1992 35 4.03 2.43 6.46 46 26 26  0 14 --
Harnisch,Pe   1995 18 3.89 2.61 6.50 61 22 28  0 11 --
Lima,Jo       1999 35 4.14 2.31 6.46 57  9 31  0 26 --
Mulholland,Te 1991 34 4.03 2.56 6.59 53 32 26  0 12 --
Neagle,De     1995 31 4.16 2.42 6.58 52 13 26  6 35 --
Neagle,De     1996 33 4.03 2.58 6.61 55 24 24  3 15 --
Perez,Ca      1998 34 4.03 2.65 6.68 53 15 29  3 21 --

Once again, I don’t know how (if at all) predictive any of this is. But I find it interesting to look more closely at Germano’s season than cumulative stats allow. Maybe you will, too…