Moncada is actually pretty good.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

He's fine. Middle of the road.

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He's better than that. You've been reading Ken W.O. too much.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Whoa there. I said he was decently successful of getting out of jams. He was. You don't have an under 4 ERA for 5 straight years, with the admittedly mediocre stuff, by not knowing how to pitch. That's what I give him credit for.

You keep going back to your fatally flawed "the other pitcher". Unless it's an ace, a pitcher's job is to keep the team in the game.

His W/L record is evidence that in fact he often didn't get out of jams and despite his more than respectable ancillary statistics, he was flawed in a way that caused him to lose many close low scoring games. I suppose you might try to sell the "run support" case, i.e. that over 300 or so career starts his offense just didn't perform when he was on the mound or that relievers blew his games an inordinate amount of the time, but those aren't likely scenarios.

"The other pitcher(s)" are real. If they're beating him half the time, that's the definition of "mediocre." It's not as if he faced Clayton Kershaw in every game or like he was pitching for the 1962 Mets. In fact, he spent a few years on a Cub team that is one of the greatest juggernauts to ever play the game.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I go back and forth on the importance of W/L. I agree that mostly the pitcher is facing the other offense, not the other pitcher...but what makes true studs like Scherzer or Verlander even more impressive is that they are often paired up against the other team's ace, which should lead to a worse W/L record than if they were facing a random selection of the opposing team's starters.

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Only aces beat you. And there's only a half dozen a year. A team beats everyone else. Generally speaking.

Various and sundry other mediocrities often beat the likes of Jose Quintana and Jeff Samardzija.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

And I don't care about what he did with the Cubs. With the White Sox, he was a fine pitcher who pitched within himself. If you want to covet W/L over earned runs in 9 innings, to me that's just digging in your heels. But it's your right as a LTG.

Terrible comp. Guppy didn't know how to pitch.

Granted, they arrived at their mediocrity via different methods.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Granted, if you use W/L as your metric. May God damn Q to hell for a 3.5 ERA over 1000 innings with the Sox.
Lone Wolf JORR.

This is where the disagreement lies. I believe he was exactly the same guy. If his team scored 10 runs every time he pitched, I believe his ERA would go up so that his W/L record would still be right around .500. Now obviously I'm exaggerating for effect. Ten runs is hyperbole and if he ever had a lucky Aaron Sele season I would expect him to have a career best winning percentage.

But the thing the W/L record is showing you that the other statistics do not is the pressure that exists in the games he pitches and how he responds to that pressure. That's why he has similar ancillary statistics to Buehrle without the same kind of winning percentage. Most games come down to a key at-bat or two. When Buehrle was tired in the seventh inning and he had a situation with two on and two out and a middle of the order guy at the plate, most of the time he could reach down and take care of that batter. He could make the pitch he needed to make in those situations. Those are the same situations where Quintana often failed and it's reflected in his W/L record. Trust me, it isn't that Buehrle was pitching for the 1927 Yankees and Quintana was pitching for the 1967 White Sox.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Yep. One year, the White Sox dropped James Baldwin down to #4, and he started 12-3 or something.

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The angriest fucking guy.

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You can make comparisons that I agree with all day. It doesn't change the fact the Q got everything out of his arm that he could, given his stuff. You disagree that he got out of jams. My recollection is he got out of more than his fair share. Hence, the 3.5 ERA over 1000 that he really had no business having. My argument isn't Bernstein's dumbassery or sabremetrics. He was SOLID for 5 years, the 6th he was cooked.

I don't recall Dan having this take, but it wouldn't surprise me. If he actually did....this one has to be the winner.

Of the takes I recall hearing firsthand...
1) his love of masking and it's effectiveness
2) Patrick Kane's presumed guilt

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Today he was on about the number of COVID cases amongst the Bulls and how he would be hesitant to go see a Bulls game at the UC cuz the COVID might get him.

What a fucking lying propagandist.

I also disagree that he had "no stuff." He wasn't some junkballing lefty. He had a respectable fastball. It's not like he was Jamie Moyer or Marco Gonzales. He certainly had a lot more "stuff" than Buehrle. I would compare him to "Losing Pitcher" John Danks.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

A junk balling nibbling lefty. No A pitches. An above average change. Buehrle is a unicorn cuz he could put it in a thimble. Danks had more heat and more spin.

200 K in 2017 and upper over 175 for most of his time with the Sox

sub 3.50 eras and even better advanced stats

innings eater as well going for 200+ for four straight years

he just wasn't as good with the cubs

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Q was pretty goof the first two seasons. He wasn't bad for a 3rd 4th 5th guy. He was never an ace but he threw 170 or more innings and had a winning record, got over 150ks each season.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

"Innings eater" is another term for "mediocre."

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Not really.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

take out the descriptor and analyze the objective data that he threw 200+ inning for four straight years with the Sox

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Have you ever heard anyone call a good pitcher an "innings eater"?

I'm not saying that Quintana was a bum. There's a place for him on a good team. If he's the fourth or fifth man in your rotation you're doing well. It's that there was a period of time where he was way more highly regarded than he ever should have been. Like Samardzija, though as Nardi pointed out, for different reasons. Quintana was mediocre at least. Samardzija was just an awful pitcher. Nobody talks much about Kyle Henricks but he actually is what people thought Quintana and Samardzija were.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Yeah I think you do hear good pitchers called innings eaters. Just different terminology. If he'd had said durable rather than innings eater you're saying the same thing just a different way and it sounds like a description for a good pitcher.
The big thing I see is that he was a 3rd or 4th guy and for some reason we expected 1 or 2 stuff from him. At least with the Cubs, where I watched most of his games, he won more than he lost, he pitched his share of innings, he got KS, he was... quite serviceable. Far from a bum.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Don't get bogged down in the semantics

200+ innings in addition to all the other objective items in my post are strong indications of a good pitcher

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

No. Not when it's used "as well as an innings eater".

Dig those heels in harder.