What the Giants are expecting from José Quintana

In the dark, concerning cloud that was Tuesday night’s Giants game, there was a silver lining. It might have been a bronze lining. Really, all we know is that the lining isn’t made out of lead or asbestos, and it probably isn’t going to hurt them. Much.

José Quintana debuted for the Giants, and he was brilliant, striking out six of the 12 batters he faced. It’s tempting to think of him as another stopgap, a pitcher who can throw a few innings of low-leverage baseball before he’s designated for assignment, like Tyler Chatwood before him. There’s something more going on here, though. Because the Giants claimed Quintana off waivers, they’re responsible for his September salary, which will be over a million dollars. There were a lot of options, and this was the most expensive one.

This front office clearly believes in Quintana’s ability to get major-league hitters out, then. And if the Giants believe that, it’s worth investigating. They’ve already earned the kind of benefit of the doubt that will last for years.

Start with the obvious point in Quintana’s favor: It wasn’t that long ago that he was really good.

Before we get to that, though, we’ll need to acknowledge that he’s been really, really bad this year. I imagine that a lot of folks flipped on Tuesday night’s game and were surprised that Quintana was on the Giants. Some of those people made a “well, well, well, isn’t this interesting” face, as they pulled out their phones and Googled his 2021 statistics and …

Well, the statistics they found weren’t pretty. Quintana performed so poorly that the Angels — a team desperate for competent pitching — couldn’t take it anymore. He performed so poorly that every single team in baseball passed on his services until the Giants, who had the lowest waiver priority for an American League player, claimed him. It’s September, and every team can use an extra arm, but every team except for one declined to add Quintana. A 6.75 ERA will do that.

Still, before the 2019 season, Quintana had been one of the most reliable pitchers in baseball. From 2013 to 2018, he threw at least 174 innings with an ERA somewhere between 3.20 and 4.15 in every season. In 2019, he allowed more runs (4.68 ERA) than he typically did, but the underlying metrics suggested that was a blip. His career FIP was 3.63 before that season, and it was 3.80 during that season. Probably fine. Probably the same pitcher.

In 2020, he hurt his thumb while washing dishes, and that’s not a metaphor or euphemism. When he returned from surgery, he immediately hurt his lat, and his season was limited to four appearances and 10 innings.

What this means is that over a 10-year career, Quintana has been worse than average at allowing runs exactly once, and even then, the underlying metrics suggested he was unlucky. He’d also failed to make 31 starts just once, and that was because he wasn’t careful with a sharp object away from the ballpark. For most of his career, he’s been both healthy and effective.

So we’ll have to keep looking for the red flags behind his 2021 ERA with the Angels. His velocity wasn’t the problem, which is a good sign. Quintana has never been a flamethrower, but that doesn’t mean that he’s armed with a Kirk Rueter-like fastball in the low-to-mid 80s. His fastball has always been modest, but it also never deserted him.

Average fastball velocity
2015 — 92 mph
2016 — 92.6
2017 — 92.1
2018 — 91.5
2019 — 91.4
2020 — 91.3
2021 — 91.5

It is certainly possible that the half-mile gap between now and 2015 was a tipping point, and that was just enough time for hitters to react. That seems unlikely, though and it’s worth noting that he was up to 94 in his final appearance with the Angels and sitting 91-93 in his Giants debut.

It wasn’t his spin rate that left him, either. That’s always been well below the league average, even when he was successful, and it hasn’t changed either way in recent seasons. He’s never been a big spin guy and never will be.

It wasn’t his ability to miss bats. If anything, that’s gotten better. Compare this season to his last good one:

Part of that is due to the climbing strikeout rate around the league, to be sure. But that can’t explain all of those gains away. For all that Quintana has done wrong this season, he’s also done plenty right. His job is to make it hard for batters to make solid contact with the baseball, and he’s done that well. Most of the time.

Here are some theories to explain his awful season, then:

Theory 1: His style of pitching is an anachronism, and it ain’t fooling the modern hitter

When Quintana was at his most successful, there were still plenty of hitters who didn’t want to get to two strikes. Their approaches shifted throughout the at-bat, especially behind in the count, and his ability to change speeds and hit corners was more effective against this approach. The typical batter in 2021 swings like he’s mad at every single baseball, even with two strikes, and maybe Quintana’s margin for error has disappeared. He’s missing more bats but finding more barrels, if that makes sense.

This would be bad for the Giants.

Theory 2: The Angels were using him incorrectly

Seems presumptuous, but the Angels have been a pitching graveyard for a while now. The Giants’ pitchologists have been excellent with the quick fixes, and they might have a solution that’s as simple as the “Just throw your splitter way more” idea that has allowed Kevin Gausman to flourish.

This would be good for the Giants.

Theory 3: He struggled to get his feel back after his thumb injury, and it screwed with his command and control

His career walks per nine innings: 2.7.

His walks per nine innings with the Angels this season: 4.9.

The bulk of those walks (26 in 33 innings) came in April and May, and he’s walked just four batters out of the 100 he’s faced since June 1. That all hints at a pitcher who wasn’t quite right after missing most of the 2020 season.

This would be good for the Giants if he figured it out (or already has).

It would be a disaster if he doesn’t find his feel and rhythm in the final month of the regular season.

Theory 4: Bad luck

A lazy theory, to be sure. But his FIP with the Angels was 4.30, and that can be more meaningful than ERA. Not always, but it’s often more predictive in a sample like this. FanGraphs, which uses FIP to calculate its WAR, puts Quintana’s value closer to Zac Gallen than the worst pitchers in the league.

This would be excellent for the Giants.

You can see the appeal, though. They just have to be right. It might win or lose the division for them.

Back in January, after Anthony DeSclafani signed, I ranked the free-agent starters still available to the Giants. Alex Wood was one of the top five. So were the indestructible Adam Wainwright and the electric Carlos Rodón, both of whom might appear on Cy Young ballots. Even one of my misses, Chris Archer, was signed by one of the smart teams (the Rays), which made me look smart by proxy.

My ability to toot my own horn, however, was limited because the top-ranked pitcher in that article was Quintana. He seemed like the absolute perfect fit back then. The article ended up being like someone from 1980 describing smartphones with uncanny accuracy, then describing how flying cars will change our lives forever.

But if there’s anything the Giants are good at, it’s looking at a pitcher with no apparent decline in stuff and believing they can fix him. They did it with Gausman, Wood and Desclafani. They get partial credit for Drew Pomeranz, too.

They see Quintana as a pitcher who wasn’t broken, and that’s exciting. If the Giants think that, there’s probably a reason for it, and they believe it so fervently that they were willing to spend more than a million dollars to find out. While it seems like the waiver claim was a direct response to Wood’s positive COVID-19 test, it was probably going to happen either way. The Giants have known they were going to need rotation depth since long before the season started, and it was a minor surprise that they didn’t address the need at the trade deadline.

Here, then, is the solution. It is not without risks. But if the Giants are giving the keys to September to José Quintana, they have confidence in him. The reason the Giants even care about September is because they’ve been right about this stuff before, so look past the ERA. You can have some cautious optimism, as a treat.

(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)