jmei wrote:

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I think you're missing the key insight-- which is that pitcher consistency is not a skill and does not carry over season-to-season. I guess we can argue whether we want a more "consistent" (lower std-deviation) pitcher or not, but it's ultimately irrelevant because as far as the data shows, it's not a trait that pitchers possess and thus our entire discussion of it is irrelevant. In practice, the distribution will never be as clear as our hypothetical examples and a pitcher's run distribution inevitably approaches a normal distribution as we increase the sample size. I suspect that any "patterns" of inconsistency that do emerge are ultimately just small-sample-size errors and reading narratives into random samples.

Agree with everything you wrote except for the bolded part. I think the key of this discussion (in terms of Lester anyway) comes down to whether or not his career numbers (or his numbers over the last 2-3 seasons) represent enough of a sample to draw conclusions from that deviate from statistical norms (the way that, eventually, people accept that some pitchers really do have a low BABIP against and project that going forward.) I know that my position is unpopular in part because it contradicts some of the stats, and that's why I'm perfectly happy to admit I may be completely wrong, I'm not satisfied one way or another yet.

As for what I bolded, what I was trying to say about the hardball times article was that I don't think it does prove that, except in the very specific case of the exact examples they used. I don't think they factored in enough information for that conclusion to hold up when compared to actual game situations, which is the only real value of all this anyway; determining how the numbers translate to production. I'm more inclined to agree with you that the distribution will never be clear enough to get anything meaningful from, but I still have some hope for some kind of advanced quality start statistic.

Look at FTHW's example: I mean, there's no stat for this, but can anyone deny his smile was as consistent as it gets?