I went to sleep in Shreveport, Woke up in Abilene

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Just a quick AL West update to note a couple of great games last night. This will also be a good time for me to bring up the idea of Pure Quality Starts (PQS for short). PQS is a system of scoring a pitcher's starts, based on a number of factors (longevity, hit and homerun prevention and dominance of the strike zone) and is quantitatively scored between 0 and 5 for all starts. A score of 4 or 5 indicates a "dominance" start, whereas a score of 0 or 1 indicates a "disaster" start. For more information on how to score PQS, please go to http://baseballhq.com/tour/pqs.shtml.In my opinion, it is a much better way of looking at a pitcher's performance than the more traditional Quality Start stat (which measures simply how long he pitches and how many runs he has yielded).

In a marquee (sort of) matchup (first and second place teams with their #1 starters), John Lackey and the California Angels took on Joe Blanton and Connie Mack's Kansas City Athletics. Personally, I am not a huge fan of Blanton, but I do love Lackey, who has been brilliant since returning from the disabled list (1.70 ERA, 0.946 WHIP over 5 starts). The Angels took this one 3-1 in just over two hours.

Lackey (2-1) PQSed a 5 with a 7 inning gem (7 IP; 4 H; 5 K; 0 BB; 1 ER), yielding a homerun to Jack Cust and not much else.

Blanton (3-8) also pitched very well through 7 innings (7 IP; 7 H; 1 BB; 3 K; 3 R - 2 ER), PQSing 4, but took a hard-luck loss.

K-Rod also notched his 25th save.


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Felix Hernandez (4-5) PQSed a 4 with a 6 inning performance (6 IP; 6 H; 3 BB; 5 K; 0 R) and Sean Green and Ryan Rowland-Smith relieved him to finish the shutout of the Red Sox 8-0.

Finally, Scott Kazmir (6-1) dominated the Rangers for 8 innings (8 IP; 6 H; 0 BB; 6 K; 2 R), PQSing a 5 in the process as well. He's been brilliant since beginning the season on the disabled list as well (7 starts, 1.40 ERA, 0.911 WHIP).

All in all, a pretty exciting night for pitching fans in the AL West.

On another note, what are anyone else's thoughts on the Quality Start vs. Pure Quality Start topic?

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