Some Davies optimism

When the 2010 season ended a lot of people, myself included, were convinced that Kyle Davies would not be part of the 2011 team. Dayton Moore, however, was not one of those people and not only did he bring Davies back but he gave him a nice raise too. Davies has long been a guy whose stuff has never translated into results but who for some reason gets chance after chance. Here's why, while Davies has had his share of terrible starts he actually does give his team a chance to win on a consistent basis.

What I've did is this, I've broken his starts down into three categories and then checked the Royals W/L record for each category. And I'm just looking at innings and earned runs, the final result of each start without regard to hits, strikeouts, and walks. So take it for what it's worth. Anyway, here are the three categories:

• Quality starts - This is defined (6+ innings and 3 earned runs or less) and a fairly accepted way to judge a pitcher.
• Serviceable starts - I don't know of any attempts to define these as they seem like something that can be open to interpretation. A serviceable start to me is one that is not a quality start but not downright awful either. So I think 5+ innings and 4 earned runs or less work as a starting point. 
• Ugly starts - They are how they sound, these are the starts where a pitcher goes less than 5 innings and/or gives up 5 earned runs. I think that works, I mean a line has to be drawn somewhere and drawing it between 4 and 5 runs sounds right.

For the purposes of this exercise I'm just focusing on his starts since 2008 and ignoring his abominable 2007 season - I'll give him a pass for being 23 years old and switching leagues mid-season. That gives us 77 starts to look at and I'll tell you immediately one stat that jumped out and surprised me, the Royals are 39-38 in those starts. For comparison they went 46-52 when Zack Greinke started the last three seasons, of course that says more about the offense than it does about Greinke.

Year	Quality Starts	W/L	Serviceable Starts	W/L	Ugly Starts	W/L
2008	8	5-3	8	4-4	5	2-3
2009	9	5-4	7	5-2	6	1-5
2010	14	10-4	10	3-7	8	3-5
2011	0	0-0	1	1-0	1	0-1
Total	31	20-11	26	13-13	20	6-14

If you don't like my definition of serviceable consider that he allowed 3 earned runs or less in 15 of the 26 starts and he pitched 6+ innings in 6 of the 11 starts where he allowed 4 runs. 


I'll be honest here, I expected a lot more than 26% of his starts to be the ugly variety. He's been extremely consistent too as his US percentages from 2008-2010 are 23, 27, and 25. So I see no reason not to expect more of the same this year, he'll be decent in three-fourths of his starts and the team will be around .500 when he pitches.

Davies is an acceptable starter for a Royals team not in win now mode. Which means I don't mind him getting 30 starts this year, but just this year and not in 2012.