White Sox Season Review: Grading the Starting Pitching

Jose Quintana: (A)

Quintana appeared in his first All-Star game in 2016, an honor that has been long overdue. On top of that, he reached double digits in wins for the first time in his career, as he posted a 13-12 record and a 3.20 ERA. While Quintana did not have the eye-popping BB/K numbers that Chris Sale posted, they were very good nonetheless. He only walked 50, and fanned 181 batters.

One interesting part of Quintana’s game is that when he throws his changeup, it is predominantly against right-handed batters. He only threw it to lefties in April, June, and July, however used it versus the righties in all months during the 2016 season. The changeup stayed in the 86-87 MPH range the whole season (vs all batters), which is only about six MPH off of his fastball, which sits around 92-93 MPH.

To sum up Quintana’s season, he finally got over the hump of becoming a legit big-time starter in the major leagues. While he is still not at the level of a Clayton Kershaw or fellow teammate Sale, his no decision total went down from 2015 (13 to seven). The Sox have two of the best lefties in the game, and under control for  a number of years. It should be fun to watch these two pitch on the South Side.