Baseball Sabermetrics: The Windy City’s Best Magnum Start Value (MSV)

Sabermetrics series on Magnum Start Value continues as comparisons are made between some of Chicago’s top pitchers past and present.

For the past few years, there have been several All-Star starting pitchers toeing the rubber in the city of Chicago. Since Magnum Start Value (MSV) is a formula that measures pitchers by their dominance on the mound, it makes sense to perform a study on three of the towns best over the past two seasons. While one is now gone, I will focus on Chris Sale (Red Sox), Jose Quintana (White Sox), and Jake Arrieta (Cubs).

While looking at an entire season for all three would be overkill at the moment, there is no reason why analyzing one month of each is not reasonable. In order to do so, I will refer to the intro article where there was discussion about calculating each month. Since that will occur, new terminology will be added when examining MSV in over a certain period of time.

In order to do so, several new terms must be included into the MSV moniker. When speaking of calculating MSV for an entire month, the total will be titled Monthly Magnum Total (MMT). If an entire year is being tallied, it is designated Yearly Magnum Total (YMT). It will not be necessary to employ YMT is this study, due to the fact that none of the research will extend past one month.

Now, staying on the topic of new terminology, it is time to dissect MSA (Magnum Start Average). There needs to be a way to differentiate the average by month and year, just as with the aforementioned vocabulary. This time around, when calculating the sum of a hurlers MSA for a month, it is called Monthly Magnum Average (MMA). Continuing on to a full season, give that statistic a title of Yearly Magnum Average (YMA). Keep in mind these stats will be under the broader aspects of the formula, however will aid the value of the study tremendously.

Since you now know the additions to MSV, let’s get to the study. Here we go!