Saturday night's Twins-Angels game represented why the Angels are in first place and the Twins are just sniffing on the edges of the playoff race. Carlos Silva pitched seven two-hit innings, earning a short shutout while walking none and striking out two. A quality start in any book. John Lackey also pitched a strong game, but allowed two runs over eight innings, giving up ten hits. A quality start, but not as strong as Sliva.

The strength of these starts can be measured by Game Score, a Bill James invention that assigns points to various elements of a pitcher's boxscore line. It's centered at 50, and the majority of game scores 50 or over are also quality starts, and I'd suggest that a better definition of a quality start is a game score of 50 or more.

The game scores of last night's starts in this game were 75 by Silva and 57 by Lackey. But Lackey picked up the win while Silva went home with a no-decision. Silva was victimized by poor run and bullpen support, as the Twins managed just three runs and the Minnesota bullpen allowed four. As it turns out, the Twins starters see starts with game scored of 50 or more turn into losses or no-decisions quite often. The following table looks at the percentage of time starters get a loss or no decision in a game score quality start (GSQS):

As you can see the Devil Rays and Nationals suffer the double whammy of not receiving many game scores over 50 from their starters, and doing a poor job of converting them when they do. The Twins, however, rank ninth in GSQS, but get a win for their pitchers less than 50% of the time. The Angels, on the other hand, only fail to turn a GSQS into a starter win one third of the time. The Twins are an elite team in terms of starting pitching, but don't have the support to turn those GSQS into wins often enough to be in the thick of the pennant race.