José Quintana is proving you don't have to "nasty" to be effective

When the Milwaukee Brewers signed José Quintana in early March, they expected the consistency and reliability that the veteran southpaw had demonstrated throughout his career. However, through his first four starts, Quintana has been much more than just a reliable innings eater; he's been an ace. As noted by the Brewers' account on the social media platform X, Quintana is the first Brewers pitcher since CC Sabathia in 2008 to win each of his first four games with the team, and he's done so in an impressive fashion.

Any time your name appears on the same list as 2008 CC Sabathia, you know you have accomplished an incredible feat. Even more impressively, while he has covered nearly 10 less innings in his first four starts than Sabathia did in 2008, Quintana has posted a lower ERA in those starts than the recently elected Hall-of-Famer did 17 years ago. However, while Sabathia was overpowering hitters with his mid-90s fastball (which appeared faster due to his elite extension) and generating a great deal of swing-and-miss with his lethal slider-changeup secondary combo, Quintana's success can't be attributed to a "nasty" arsenal of pitches, but rather an elite ability to place the ball exactly where he wants in any situation.

José Quintana is leading the Brewers pitching staff despite ranking last in one pitching metric

Let's talk about Stuff+. Designed by the ingenious folks at FanGraphs as a metric to measure a pitcher’s "nastiness," Stuff+ takes into account the physical characteristics of each pitch and assigns it a value, with 100 considered average and nastier pitches ranking as high as 180 (meaning that pitch is 80% better than the league average). While movement and velocity are the main drivers of the statistic, other factors are considered as well. In the words of Owen McGratten, a contributor for FanGraphs, "Important features include, but are not limited to, release point, velocity, vertical and horizontal movement, and spin rate."

While there exists an interesting debate around the impact that Stuff+ and other metrics that measure pitch movement are having on the sport, and specifically on pitching injuries, for the purposes of this article, we will simply focus on what the statistic interestingly reveals about the current Brewers pitching staff.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Brewers’ electric young set-up man, Abner Uribe, who sports an upper-90s fastball and a wipe-out slider that generates well above league-average horizontal break, has the highest overall Stuff+ (117) on the team. However, while Stuff+ does assign an overall score to each pitcher, it is often used to understand what each pitcher specifically excels at by generating a score for each individual pitch. Nestor Cortes' sinker (155), Aaron Civales' curveball (152), and Trevor Megill's knuckle-curve (134) hold the highest individual pitch Stuff+ scores on Milwaukee's pitching staff, which passes the eye-test as each of those pitches generates a ton of movement.

For the most part, a pitcher will have at least one pitch that has a Stuff+ score of 100 or better, which is generally their most used secondary pitch or their go-to fastball shape. In fact, all but one pitcher on the Brewers staff has at least one pitch with a Stuff+ score of 100 or better. The one outlier? José Quintana.

According to Stuff+, Quintana's best pitch is his curveball, which has a score of 92. His overall Stuff+ score is 82, meaning his arsenal as a whole is 18% "less nasty" than the average MLB pitcher's, so to speak. So how has Quintana been so successful in the early goings? Let's break down his most recent start against the St. Louis Cardinals to find the answer.

Breaking down Quintana's most recent start in St. Louis

First off, take a look at the following 90-second highlight reel of Quintana's six strikeouts against the Cardinals on Sunday afternoon.

The keen observer will notice that all of Quintana's strikeouts were looking, but the keener observer will notice that all six strikeouts came on Quintana's sinking fastball, which modestly hovers around the 90 MPH mark. Not only is Quintana's two-seamer not an overpowering fastball, but it also generates less drop or "sink" than the average sinker. With mediocre velocity and below-average movement, it's unsurprising that Quintana's sinker has a Stuff+ score of 80.

So how did Quintana find so much success with his sinker on Sunday afternoon? Perfect location is to thank for several of the strikeouts. Each of his three strikeouts against lefties came on fastballs that he located perfectly on the outside edge of the plate, with the arm-side run making the pitch look like a ball before breaking back into the zone at the last minute. FanGraphs also generates a metric called Location+, which is meant to be an all-encompassing statistic that explains how well a pitcher locates their pitches. And while Quintana ranks last on the Brewers in Stuff+, he leads the team in Location+.

However, elite pitch placement wasn't the only tool that Quintana utilized on Sunday afternoon. You'll notice that several of his strikeouts, particularly the two against Cardinals' DH Luken Baker, came on fastballs right down the middle. To produce this head-scratching result, Quintana set Baker up with his previous pitches. In each at-bat, Quintana threw several breaking pitches, a mix of curveballs and changeups, on the outside corner before freezing Baker with fastballs down the middle that he expected to tumble out of the zone like the previous pitches. These strikeouts are a testament to Quintana's ability to throw any pitch at any point in the at-bat thanks to his elite ability to locate.

No, Quintana won't miss bats with a triple-digits fastball or an air-bending breaking ball, but as he's shown already this season, that will not stop him from being successful. In an age of velocity and spin rates, the wily veteran is showing that with flawless location and strategic pitch selection, pitchers can still be effective without an arsenal of "nasty" pitches.