Horrible Quality Starts

With Batista not making it out of the third last night, I wondered how many games our starters had given us no chance to win at all. Everyone is familiar with the "Quality Start" stat, I am interested in the Horrible Quality Start (HQS). I am defining it as going less than 5 innings and giving up 5 or more runs. My thought process being that if you go at least 5, no matter how awful, at least you haven't trashed the bullpen, and if you give up 4 or less, even if its only over 2 or 3 innings, at least the team is still in the game. With me?

So the M's have 6 HQS, 2 each from Batista, HoRam and Weaver the Elder (and suckier). Within our division only Texas has more, with 8. The Angels have just 3 and the A's none. None!

But we're even worse on a percentage basis because of all the rainouts (snowouts). The Angels 3 HQS came over 37 games (8%) while ours came over just 32 (19%). We're only 3 percentage points behind the Rangers(22%).

We're 16-16 and just two and a half games out of first place. But we can't really hope to contend punting 1 out of every 5 starts. Our offense just isn't that good.