Just to put a cap on it, Bieber, McKenzie, and Quantrill combined for 58 quality starts out of 93 last year, or 62.4%
The rest of the staff combined for 17 quality starts out of 69, or 24.6%.
The area with the most potential for improvement is the 4th and 5th starters, who averaged just one quality start out of four last year, in large part due to injuries to Civale and Plesac.
You might argue that the offense, which finished 14th of 30 in runs, could also improve significantly with the additions of Bell and Zunino, a full season of Oscar Gonzalez, and a healthy Jose Ramirez, and I think it definitely will.
Those are the two areas where I see the most potential for improvement.
Biebs, Sticks and Quantrill were all in the top 30 in MLB for quality starts, pretty impressive when you think about it. Even with his issues Plesac was tied for #59 qualified starters with 11 in 24 starts. I know we "can" do better, but I will take that from a #4/5 every year if he can get back his previous advanced stats with it. If Plesac stops hitting or tearing inanimate objects and goes 31 starts that should be around 14/15 QS.
Civale is the question mark. Was he being protected after his '21 injury with his pitch counts not to go longer into games last year or did Tito prefer to ride the hot hands in the bullpen instead of an extra inning/10-15 pitches from Civale? After being recalled between June-August, we scored 3 or less runs in 7 out of 9 starts, so there was less margin for error. He only threw 90+ pitches 3 times, 6+ innings 6 and 4 QS.
In 2019 six out of 10 starts Civale went 6+ innings, all quality starts. In 2020 10 out of 11 starts were 6 innings+ and 95+ pitches, 7 out of 11 were QS. In 2021 before his finger injury on 6/21, he threw 90+ pitches in 13 out of 14 starts. Seven of the 14 starts were QS and 11 out of 14 were 6+ innings. From 2019 to pre-injury 2021, 27 out of 34 starts were 6+ innings and 20 out of 35 were QS.
I'm using the stats gathered
here, Reddit post for average SP ranking last year.
Average No. 3 Starter
137.0 IP, 3.88 ERA/3.94 FIP, 1.7 WAR
Average No. 4 Starter
103.1 IP, 4.38 ERA/4.22 FIP, 1.0 WAR
Civale's '19-'21 averaged 3.76 ERA/4.28 FIP, 1.3 WAR, 162 game adjusted average 1.7 WAR. Plesac's '19-'21 averaged 3.93 ERA/4.56FIP, 1.7 WAR.
Baseball Reference's projections for both averaged out around SP4 for this year. If we can get average '19-'21 years from both guys, that would be a 3.5 (Baseball Reference projections) to 4.5 ( average '19-21 years) WAR improvement from their collective -1.6 WAR last year, not including the -0.9 WAR from the Columbus Express starting pitchers..
