<Li> Randy Johnson (403 of 603, 66.8%) </Li> <P> An early criticism of the statistic, made by Moss Klein, writing in The Sporting News, is that a pitcher could conceivably meet the minimum requirements for a quality start and record a 4.50 ERA, seen as undesirable at the time . Bill James addressed this in his 1987 Baseball Abstract, saying the hypothetical example (a pitcher going exactly 6 innings and allowing exactly 3 runs) was extremely rare amongst starts recorded as quality starts, and that he doubted any pitchers had an ERA over 3.20 in their quality starts . This was later confirmed through computer analysis of all quality starts recorded from 1984 to 1991, which found that the average ERA in quality starts during that time period was 1.91 . </P> <P> Another criticism against the statistic is that it is not beneficial for pitchers who pitch many innings per start . If a pitcher allows three earned runs in six innings, he gets a quality start with an ERA of 4.50 for that game . But if a pitcher pitches for nine innings and allows four earned runs, he would have a 4.00 ERA, but would not get a quality start . Former pitcher Carl Erskine said "in my day, a quality start was a complete game...you gave everybody a day's rest ." </P> <P> That the category is more reliable in the aggregate can be seen with countervailing individual examples, such as the ones listed by Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski in a 2011 piece on the subject: </P>

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