Musings on Christmas Songs

With the Christmas season upon us, it is impossible to go anywhere without being inundated with Christmas songs.  I have also noticed that different places will play a different selection of Christmas songs which got me thinking that most Christmas songs can be placed into one of four basic categories.

1 – Jesus Songs

These are the songs about Jesus and His birth.  This includes the classic Christmas carols like “Away in a Manger” or “Angels We Have Heard on High” as well as some of the more recent Christmas songs like “Mary, Did You Know?” or “Welcome to Our World.”  This category also includes religious Christmas songs that don’t mention Jesus directly, such as “Ding Dong Merrily on High.”

2 – Santa Claus Songs

These are songs about Santa Claus.  This includes songs that are directly about Santa like “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” or “Hooray for Santy Claus” as well as the songs more tangentially related to Santa Clause like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”  This category also includes songs that are about Christmas-y characters like “Frosty the Snowman” or the songs from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  They may have nothing to do with Santa, but they are very similar in tone to the ones specifically about Santa.  When in doubt, if the song is aimed at kids, it belongs in this category.

[Edit: December 17
This category also includes songs that deal with magical occurrences during the Christmas season.]

3 – Christmas Season Songs

These are songs about celebrating the Christmas season.  This includes songs like “White Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”  Common themes of these songs include giving gifts, spending time with loved ones, and wishing good will to our fellow man.  This is also a bit of a catch-all category in that if the Christmas song in question doesn’t really fit with the other three then it goes in here.

4 – Winter Songs

These are songs that are considered Christmas songs but really have nothing to do with Christmas but are instead about the weather around Christmastime as experienced in the states north of the Mason-Dixon line.  This includes songs like “Jingle Bells” and “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.”  I go back and forth as to whether these songs really form a category all their own or if they are really a very large subset of the Christmas Season songs.

There are some songs that could be considered hybrids of two categories.  “The Christmas Shoes” mentions Jesus specifically, and is written from a Christian perspective, so that would put it in with the Jesus Songs, but the story of the song is about buying presents and showing goodwill to your fellow man, which puts it squarely in with the Christmas Season Songs.  “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is a fun one because the category it belongs in depends on whose perspective we’re using.  If we’re going by the perspective of the child singing the song, it’s a Santa Claus song since it’s about Mommy kissing the real Santa Claus and for some reason Daddy is nowhere to be found.  If, however, we look at it from the perspective of what’s really going on, it belongs in the Christmas Season category since it’s about a Christmas party where Daddy has dressed up as Santa Claus and is using the mistletoe as an excuse to snog Mommy (or vice versa).

Is there an important category that I’ve overlooked?  Are you wondering in which group a particular Christmas song belongs?  Comment away.

Musings on Characters: The Little Mermaid

I am currently in the middle of a two weekend run of The Little Mermaid Jr., a shortened version of the Broadway musical based on the Disney movie (loosely adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale).  The songs are loads of fun but I have come to realize that the Disney version of the story is filled with characters who are either lousy people or lousy at their jobs.

Spoilers for the five people out there who haven't seen the movie or are unfamiliar with the story.

Ariel is the worst Disney princess ever.  She is selfish, irresponsible, and has no regard for authority.  The second scene in both the movie and the show features a concert in which Ariel will make her big singing debut.  And yet, when the time comes for her big entrance, she is nowhere to be found.  She is too busy looking for human stuff to bother with trivial things like concerts (or rehearsals).  And it's not as if she made the choice not to go - she simply forgot.  This shows wanton disregard for Sebastian as her director, her sisters as her fellow performers, and all the merfolk who came to the concert hoping to hear her sing.  When she makes the selfish decision to become human, she does it without thinking about her family who just might worry about where she is when she suddenly disappears.  When King Triton makes rules about not venturing to the surface, he is doing so with good reason.  In the first minute of the movie three dolphins and a seagull are almost run over by a ship manned by sailors who are hauling a net full of fish onto the deck.  These are dangers Triton is trying to keep his people safe from, but every time he tries to enforce these rules on Ariel, she busts out with the "You're so unfair!" language.  And apparently the only qualification for being the love of her life is to be really handsome.

In the musical, Prince Eric's father is dead, and yet he is continually avoiding taking up the crown, much to the chagrin of his valet, Grimsby (who may be the only truly respectable person in the entire cast of characters).  Instead, Eric spends his time roaming the seas, actively thwarting Grimsby's attempts to provide the kingdom with a king, a queen, and a subsequent heir.

As bad as Ariel's decision is to trade her voice to become human, it is King Triton who makes the worst decision in the story.  He surrenders his power to the witch Ursula in order to save his daughter.  This is the WRONG decision.  As king, his first responsibility is to his kingdom and his subjects.  Delivering them into the hands of a power hungry woman who wants to dominate everything in the ocean is not in their best interests.  And it's not as if Ariel is his only child and heir; he has six other daughters, all of whom are older than Ariel, and therefore presumably higher up in the line of succession.

Triton is lucky Ursula was even worse than he was as ruler of the seas.  Sure she's really good when it comes to manipulating and conniving, but when she finally gets all the power she wants, her reign of terror lasts about five minutes before she loses control of her powers and is undone.

Sebastian is a terrible director.  Not only does he persist in crafting a concert around a singer who consistently misses rehearsal, but he is so incompetent that he starts the concert without knowing whether or not his star is even in the building.  Ariel's sisters are just as bad.  Could even one of them take the time to remind Ariel of when the concert is and then check in with her right before it all starts?

Even Chef Louis is a failure if he can't catch one simple hermit crab that is running around loose in his kitchen.

The more I think about the Disney version of the story, the more I prefer the original ending.  The Little Mermaid makes the bad decision to give up her voice to get legs to try and woo her prince.  But he ends up choosing someone else.  The Little Mermaid is doomed to die when the sun sets.  But her sisters show up at the last moment to give her an out: if she kills the prince, letting his blood spill on her feet, she will turn back into a mermaid.  But this time she makes the right decision and spares the prince and as a result dies.  It's tragic, especially since she dies directly as a result of making a good choice, but it shows that choices have consequences, while the Disney version has Ariel getting everything she wanted even though she consistently makes the wrong choice.

My Thoughts on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I went to a midnight showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and thoughts about the film have been rolling around in my head ever since.  I don't think I can call this a review of the film (though I did really like it and encourage everyone to go see it).  Instead it will be more musing on the process of adapting a work that has been much on my mind over the past several months.  There will be plenty of spoilers for both the movie and the book.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the text actually made it into the movie.  Peter Jackson gives us most of the "Good morning" scene from the first chapter of the book.  The movie trolls are very similar to those in the book.  We get the "Chip the glasses" song.  Half the riddles made it into the movie and all were unaltered from Tolkien's prose.  Bilbo loses his waistcoat buttons (though in a slightly different way).  The goblins call Orcrist and Glamdring "Biter" and "Beater."  And we even got Bilbo saying, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."  All of these gave me a thrill of happiness when I saw them.  (Though I was disappointed but not surprised that both the talking purse and the "Tra-la-la-lally" song did not make it into the movie.)

Of course the problem with Peter Jackson putting so much of the book into the film is that it makes for a really long running time.  There were many times that I felt I was watching the extended edition of the movie instead of the theatrical edit, especially in the first act.  Jackson opens with a fun scene of old Bilbo reminiscing about his past as he prepares for his eleventy-first birthday party.  While it was a fun treat seeing Ian Holm and Elijah Wood again, the scene went on far too long and added nothing to the narrative other than saying, "This is a prequel, not a sequel."  Then the Unexpected Party happens, and it also goes on longer than it needs to.  It never stopped being entertaining for me, but it could have covered the same narrative purpose and had the same emotional impact at half the length.  In the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo finally heads out on his journey about an hour into the film.  I wasn't paying attention to the running time, but it felt like at least 45 minutes until Bilbo finally leaves Bag End.  With so much narrative ground left to cover, I felt it was a misuse of the limited running time to give so much of it to the opening scenes that could have all been told more efficiently.  The longer edits should have been saved for the extended edition.

In many ways, the pacing felt more like Jackson's King Kong than the Lord of the Rings films.  In Lord of the Rings, there was so much story he had to tell that he was forced to be as efficient as possible.  So even though the movies were all really long, they never felt long because of the fast pace.  On the flip side, there was much less story to tell in King Kong, so he was able to fill it with all the extended action scenes he wanted.  While it never got dull and only the dinosaur stampede scene seemed gratuitous or overlong, the movie had a bloated feel that could have been alleviated by tightening up the scenes by shaving a minute here, two minutes there, to reduce the whole running time by half an hour.  The Hobbit could have used more fat trimming.

The idea of making Azog a major villain almost works for me.  In the books he plays a pivotal role in the Battle of Azanulbizar, and his son, Bolg, is the leader of the goblins in the Battle of Five Armies.  Conflating the two characters is something I don't have a problem with.  What I didn't like was him tracking them across Middle Earth.  It involves creating scenes that are nowhere to be found in the book, nor do they fit in alongside what is in the book.  (And the shot of him being held back by his minions in the Battle of Azanulbizar was so out of keeping of my vision of goblins that it completely threw me out of the movie.)  He is serving a similar role to that of Lurtz in Fellowship of the Ring.  Lurtz was not in the book, but was added to give more drama to the climax of Fellowship.  (And his death is one of the most satisfying decapitations I've seen.)  But Lurtz was inserted more organically.  There was already a group of orcs trying the find the fellowship and a showdown between Aragorn and an orc captain made a lot of sense.  But the showdown between Thorin and Azog was a forced attempt at turning a scene that ends in a deus ex machina (or eucatastrophe if you prefer) into a more satisfying climax.  If Thorin had defeated Azog I might have felt different, but as it stands, I felt like there wasn't much of an ending to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

I think the biggest flaw of the film is its structure.  In my previous post I said I would end the first film with the battle with the spiders.  The reason I chose that as my climax is because it is the first time that Bilbo really takes charge and becomes both a leader and an action hero.  Also, it's the first point in the story that I felt was worthy of being the climax to a movie as being rescued by someone else doesn't make for a compelling climax.  After seeing the ending of the movie, I am more convinced that I was right.  They tried valiantly to make their climax work but too much of it just seemed forced.  And my big worry is that making Bilbo be more proactive here will give his battle with the spiders less of an impact.  And Thorin's "I didn't like you but now I do" speech was cheesy and too close to his powerful deathbed scene.  I'm afraid when that scene comes in the third movie it will have less of an impact because of the climax of this movie.

But the structure issues go beyond the misplaced climax.  There was an awful lot of setup in this movie, so much so that it felt less like a contained movie and more like part one of three.  The second scene in the film is a flashback to the destruction of Erebor by Smaug, which delays even longer our introduction to Martin Freeman as young Bilbo.  That could have been moved to later in the movie, doing what the animated film did and putting the flashback footage on top of the dwarves singing their song.  That could have been really powerful, would have given us more of that awesome song, and could have kept the beginning tighter and less information-logged.  And while it was cool that they incorporated the flashback to the Battle of Azanulbizar, it came so late in the film that I found myself wishing that they had moved it to another film.  After all, the three Lord of the Rings films all start with some kind of flashback, and I think the Battle of Azanulbizar could have made a wonderful opening flashback.  Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite of the Lord of the Rings movies largely because it has a tighter, more streamlined narrative.  I have a feeling An Unexpected Journey is going to be my least favorite of the Hobbit movies because it is too concerned with the movies that will come later.

A few random thoughts:
When Bilbo had trouble pulling the dagger soon to be known as Sting from the head of the warg, was I the only person to think, "Who so pulleth out this sword of this skull is righwise born king of Middle Earth"?
Why are all the goblins CG?
The chin bag on the Great Goblin is disgusting.
When they showed Thror succumbing to dragon sickness, I half expected him to start turning into a dragon (and becoming Smaug) much like Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader or Fafnir in Norse mythology.  (And possibly the dragon in Beowulf.)
Bilbo and a goblin fall down a crevasse.  The goblin suffers serious injury.  Bilbo is largely unharmed.  The dwarves are also unharmed by their large tumble (and getting squashed by the Great Goblin's body).  Mythbusters would like to have a word with you, Peter Jackson.
While the inclusion of the stone giants was cool, the sequence was overblown and added nothing to the narrative.  It is as useless and contrived a scene as the "Nobody tosses a dwarf" sequence in Fellowship.
I was hoping Glorfindel would make a cameo in Rivendell.  Oh well.  There's still hope he'll show up in the later movies.

I've spent much of this post bagging on the movie, but I really liked it and there were lots of things they did really well.  I think my favorite scene was the Riddles in the Dark scene.  It is the longest scene in the movie and yet I didn't want it to end.  Smeagol has never been cuter and Gollum never as nasty.  However, Bilbo's mercy scene would have been more powerful had not Gandalf practically told Bilbo, "Don't kill Gollum when you meet him," way back at the beginning of the film.  I also liked that they were able to keep things light, unafraid to occasionally go silly with the dwarves.  After all, Tolkien does that all through the book.  The dwarves' song is amazing and I liked that it wove a spell on Bilbo similar to how it happens in the book.  The scene of Radagast spying out Dol Guldur was well done and provided a nice contrast for the character, showing him in a more competent and less silly light.  Martin Freeman was excellent as Bilbo.  I was already a fan before this movie, and when I heard he had been cast as Bilbo I thought it was a fabulous choice, but I liked him even more than I was expecting.  I also liked how they played with the Took/Baggins dichotomy.  This is a big theme in the book, but I was unsure if it would get any lip service in the film since it's largely an internal conflict.  I'm glad they're doing something with it.  And while I have serious problems with the end of the film, I really liked the moment when Bilbo pledges to help the dwarves get their home back.  I am very pleased they only showed glimpses of Smaug, saving the big reveal for later.  (I'm hoping we don't get a full look at him until Bilbo has his conversation with Smaug.)  Smaug being covered up by the treasure was a nice visual touch.  And of course it is a visually sumptuous film.

That's just about everything I have to say right now.  I'm sure I'll have more to say once I see it a few more times, and my opinions are likely to change after more viewings allow me to better divorce the movie from the book, judging it on its own merits.

Musings on Tolkien: The Hobbit Trilogy and How I Would Do It

Peter Jackson announced that what was originally going to be two Hobbit movies would be expanded into a full-fledged trilogy because he had so much footage.  As of this writing, I haven't heard anything about how he plans to organize the material and structure his three movies.  But looking at all the material he wants to or might include in his movies, this is how I would structure the three films.

The first movie focuses largely on Bilbo.  He is in all but one or two scenes.  Movie one also lays the groundwork for the White Council storyline.  The climax is the fight with the spiders in Mirkwood and ends with Bilbo and the dwarves getting captured by the elves.

The bulk of the second movie covers the White Council storyline.  Gandalf and company expel the Necromancer from Mirkwood.  This is the big climax of the second film.  Meanwhile, Bilbo breaks the dwarves out of prison and they escape down the river in barrels.  There might have to be some contrived set pieces added to this sequence to flesh it out.  Plenty of time is spent in Lake-town, convincing the residents of Lake-town to help our band of adventurers.  This gives plenty of opportunity to introduce Bard the Bowman as a major character and offers ample screentime to Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake-town.  It ends with Bilbo and the dwarves heading off the the Lonely Mountain.

The third movie focuses on two major set pieces: Bilbo's conversation with Smaug and the Battle of Five Armies.  This allows for plenty of screentime to be devoted to the politics that lead up to the battle and Thorin's case of dragon fever.  The movie opens with a flashback to the battle of Azanulbizar.  The movie ends with Bilbo saying, "Thank goodness."

Possible titles for the three movies: The Fellowship of the Burglar, The Two Fortresses, and The Return of the King Under the Mountain.

The big problem I see with this structure is that movie two has very little of Bilbo.  However, the book states that Gandalf is "finishing up" his business with the Necromancer as Bilbo and the dwarves are floating down the river in and on barrels, so the chronology works pretty well.

Of course, if I was in charge, there wouldn't even be three movies.  I would try to do the whole thing in one movie, sticking to the material in the book and ignoring the material in the Appendices and other works.  Hopefully I could get the run time down to about two hours and get a PG rating.  After all, it's a children's book, which means it should be a children's movie.

Musings on Tolkien: The Hobbit Movie and How I Would Do It

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies are excellent, and it seemed like only a matter of time before he directed a movie version of The Hobbit.  However, there are some problems with the source material that make it difficult to just jump right into The Hobbit with the same vim and verve as the Lord of the Rings movies.  For one, the books are very different.  The Hobbit is a children's book; a faerie story with a light-hearted tone, plenty of humor, and songs that help carry the plot.  (You could even argue that The Hobbit is a musical in book form.)  The Lord of the Rings by contrast, is a much more serious and darker book with a more adult audience in mind and is considered the first modern fantasy novel.  By going back and doing The Hobbit second as a prequel, the difference in tone and content between the books causes a serious problem.  If Peter Jackson goes with the epic qualities of his Lord of the Rings movies, it can come across as a betrayal of the source material.  However, if he treats The Hobbit like the children's book it is, he'll end up with a movie that is out of step with the ones he's already made.  And that doesn't even take into account how Tolkien's concept of the One Ring changed: in The Hobbit it's just Bilbo's magic ring while in The Lord of the Rings it's the most powerful instrument of evil in Middle Earth.  These are problems that Peter Jackson is going to have to work out and I'm sure he'll do a fine job.  But this is how I would tackle the problem.

INT. BAG END - NIGHT

Sam Gamgee settles down in his armchair to smoke his evening pipe.  His children crowd around him.

ELANOR: Daddy!  Tell us a story!

SAM: Would you like to hear the story about how Mister Frodo and I journeyed to Mordor to destroy the Ring?

ROSE: You always tell us that one!

GOLDILOCKS: Tell us a different story!

SAM: Well, have I ever told you the story of how Old Mister Bilbo went on an adventure and found the Ring?

HAMFAST: No you haven't.

DAISY: Tell us that one, Daddy!

Sam picks up a large red book and opens it to the first pages.

SAM: (reading) In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...

FADE TO:

EXT. BAG END - MORNING

Bilbo Baggins sits on the front porch of Bag End, blowing smoke rings.

This opening scene serves multiple purposes.  It ties The Hobbit in with The Lord of the Rings, establishing this as a prequel.  But since it is framed as Sam telling the story to his kids, it allows for The Hobbit to be more of a children's movie.  The book takes a very pro-Bilbo stance, treating the Thorin and Company as a bumbling band of misfits.  If Sam were narrating the movie, it would only make sense for him to build up Bilbo as one of the most famousest of hobbits and the only one with any real amount of common sense.  The narrator of The Hobbit has several good lines and making Sam the narrator would help get those lines into the movie.  And it could also provide a means to address some of the inconsistencies between the books as the children could interrupt Sam's story on several occasions, much like Fred Savage does in The Princess Bride.  Sam could then provide an explanation for the differences, he could essentially say, "Shut up.  I'm telling a story," or he could even say, "That's how Mister Bilbo wrote it and so that's how I'm telling it," which would be a sly way of shoving the blame back on Tolkien.  And I think Tolkien would approve of this approach because he was obsessed with framing narratives.  Of course I would have to restrain myself from inserting a scene right after the "Tra-la-la-lally" song in which one of the kids asks, "Is this a singing book?"

Musings on Tolkien: Mingling

Most of the time in Tolkien's works, the Free Peoples of Middle Earth keep to themselves.  Elves hang out with Elves, Men with Men, and Dwarves ignoring as much of the rest of the world as possible.  But every so often there are instances of different people groups mingling with each other, and this is always a Good Thing.

Gondolin was the greatest of the cities of the Elves.  One of the marks of its greatness was that in was inhabited by both Noldor and Sindar.  And when Hurin and Huor, and later Tuor, came to Gondolin, they were treated as valuable members of the community, even though they were Men.  At the Gates of Moria, Gandalf wistfully recalls a happier time when the Elves of Hollin were in close friendship with the Dwarves of Moria.  At the beginning of the Hobbit it tells of a time when the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Men of Dale lived in close friendship before Smaug laid waste to the countryside.  And by the end of the book, that friendship has been reformed with the added close allies of the Elves of Mirkwood.

All the great love stories of Middle Earth are romances between the races: Thingol and Melian, Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, Aragorn and Arwen.  And one of the great relationships of The Lord of the Rings is the friendship between Gimli and Legolas.

But the best example of mingling is embodied in the Silmarils.  The Trees of Valinor were among the greatest of the works of the Ainur, and Yavanna's masterpiece.  But they were at their most beautiful when the golden light of Laurelin and the silver light of Telpirion mingled.  Feanor, the greatest craftsman of the Elves, captured the mingled light of the trees in his Silmarils, the greatest work of craftsmanship by the Elves.  After Beren recovers one of the Silmarils and delivers it to Thingol, Thingol takes the Silmaril and has it set inside the Nauglamir, the Necklace of the Dwarves, the greatest work of Dwarven craftsmanship.  So we have the greatest of the works of the Ainur encased in the greatest of the works of the Elves, encased in the greatest of the works of the Dwarves.  And it is possibly even more beautiful when worn by Luthien, the daughter of an Elf and an Ainu, married to a Man.  And when that exact Silmaril is delivered to Valinor which sets off a chain reaction that ends with the final destruction of Morgoth, it is delivered by Earendil, the son of Tuor and Idril, and his wife Elwing, the granddaughter of Beren and Luthien.

Musings on Baseball: The Pitcher Win

Many of the serious baseball analysts I read and listen to deride the pitcher win stat, saying that it says very little about how well a pitcher actually pitched, especially since starters rarely pitch more than six innings.  There are so many other people playing the game and so many other variables that go into winning a game that giving one player credit for the win is just ridiculous.  I am in complete agreement with this assessment.  When I hear people on the radio or television saying, "So-and-so is going for his fifth consecutive win," or "Such-and-such is still looking for his first win of the season," I find myself screaming at the voices who can't hear me, "That doesn't mean anything!"  However, I think the pitcher win is here to stay.

Let's look at three statements:
(1)  Pitcher X has a win in 7 of his last 10 outings.
(2)  Pitcher X has a quality start in 7 of his last 10 outings.
(3)  Pitcher X has a Game Score of 70 or higher in 7 of his last 10 outings.

What do these three statements actually tell us about how well Pitcher X actually pitched?

In order to get a win, a pitcher must be the pitcher of record after the fifth inning.  To be the pitcher of record a pitcher must be the pitcher who was pitching when his team gained the lead for good.  So, if a team took the lead in the first inning and never surrendered it, the pitcher who pitched the fifth inning would get the win.  If a team took the lead in the eighth inning and never surrendered it, the pitcher who pitched the eighth inning would get the win.  (It's a little more nuanced and complex than that, but that's the gist of it.)  So for a starter to get a win, he has to pitch at least five innings, have a lineup behind him that scores more runs than his gives up, and have the relievers that come after him not give up the lead.

With so many variables in play, the pitcher win can be a pretty fickle stat.  Sometimes, the pitcher who pitches the worst in a game is the one who gets the win.  This happened on the first day of the season this year.  Justin Verlander pitched eight shutout innings for the Detroit Tigers.  Jose Valverde came in to pitch the ninth inning with a 2-0 lead.  He proceeded to give up two runs in the top of the ninth.  The Tigers scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, but because Valverde was now the pitcher of record, he was the pitcher awarded with the win.  But who was more deserving of the win, the pitcher who gave up 0 runs in 8 innings or the one who gave up 2 runs in 1 inning?

Also, lack of run support can lead to a pitcher not getting any wins.  In 2007, San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain was one of the best pitchers in the National League.  He was among the league leaders in several pitching stats.  Except wins.  Because of the Giants' anemic bats, Matt Cain got a measly 7 wins in 2007.  In 2008 he was just as good, and even tied for the league lead in games started.  He got a whopping 8 wins.  Meanwhile, in 2007, Jamie Moyer of the Philadelphia Phillies pitched almost exactly the same number of innings as Matt Cain, yet gave up more hits and more runs than Cain while striking out fewer batters.  His win total?  14.

So statement 1 says that Pitcher X pitched at least 5 innings in those 7 games and got good run support.

In order to get a quality start, a pitcher must pitch at least 6 innings and give up fewer than 3 earned runs.  (For those of you not in the know, an earned run is a run that has been determined to be the fault of the pitcher.  Unearned runs are runs that are not the fault of the pitcher, usually scoring as a direct result of an error on the part of one of the fielders.  The idea being that a pitcher should not be penalized for the failures of his defense.)  If a starter pitches a quality start, he puts his team in a good position to win the game.  In April of this month, teams whose pitchers got a quality start had a combined .648 winning percentage.  That comes to 105 wins in a 162 game season.  To put that into perspective, the Philadelphia Phillies last year had the most wins in baseball with 102.

The big advantage of the quality start is that it completely removes run support from the equation.  And it's hard to be dissatisfied with your pitcher's performance if he gets a quality start.  However, the quality start is still imperfect.  It ignores unearned runs.  Also, if a pitcher does the bare minimum requirements for a quality start, his stats end up being pretty pedestrian.  Also, a pitcher who pitches 9 innings but gives up 4 runs does not get credit for a quality start, even though that's an overall better performance than a six inning three run start.

In 2007, Matt Cain had 22 quality starts, tied for sixth in the league.  (Jamie Moyer had 18.)  He had a quality start 69% of the time.  In 2008 he had 21 quality starts.  While they don't tell the whole story, his quality start totals are a much better indicator of his performance than his win totals.

So statement 2 says that Pitcher X pitched at least 6 innings in those 7 games and gave up no more than 3 earned runs in each one.  (Or, pitched like Matt Cain in 2007.)

Game Score is a statistic that was developed by baseball statistician Bill James.  It awards points for innings pitched and strikeouts, and subtracts points for walks, hits, and runs allowed.  Most quality starts get game scores in the upper 50s and 60s, with an average around 64.  A game in which a pitcher pitched 7 innings with 1 run, 4 hits, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts would get a Game Score of 70.  That is a really nice outing, one that fantasy baseball players covet.  Roughly one quarter of all quality starts have a score of 70 or better.

Last year, Justin Verlander led the majors with a 65.9 average Game Score.  The first game of the season where he was brilliant but did not get the win, he scored an 84.  In 2007, Matt Cain had an average Game Score of 54.7, good for ninth in the league.  This year to date, Cliff Lee is the highest ranked pitcher in average Game Score with exactly 10 starts.  In those 10 starts he has 0 wins, 7 quality starts, and 3 games in which he got a Game Score of 70 or better.

So statement 3 says that Pitcher X pitched like an ace 7 out of the last 10 games.  And unless the other 3 games were really ugly, over his last 10 games, Pitcher X has been one of the best pitchers in baseball.

If I was to rank the three statements as to how much they actually tell us about Pitcher X's performance over his last 10 starts, I would rank them 3, 2, 1.  But if I was to rank them how they sound to a casual fan, the rankings would reverse.  Because I am guessing that only the hardcore stat-heads are even aware of or interested in Game Score and a score of 70 doesn't mean much without any context.  Quality start sounds better but unspectacular.

But when I say that Pitcher X won 7 of his last 10 starts, it sounds amazing.  It says that Pitcher X is a dominating force.  It says that when Pitcher X starts, his team has at worst a .700 winning percentage.  It says Pitcher X will carry his team to victory because Pitcher X is a Winner!  And after all, isn't it all about winning?

Which is why the pitcher win is here to stay.  No amount of number crunching will ever sound better than, "Pitcher X got a win!"