a record for most quality starts in a season previously set by Gibson (22) and Chris Carpenter (22, 2005). Among left-handed pitchers and pitchers of the American League, Framber Valdez leads with his current streak of 27 for the 2022 season, that is now the new record for most consecutive quality starts in one season. From 1871 to the end of the 2020 MLB season, the overall leaders by percentage (min. 100 starts): Jacob deGrom (136 of 183, 74.3%) Clayton Kershaw (260 of 354, 73.4%) Jeff Tesreau (148 of 207, 71.5%) Babe Ruth (105 of 147, 71.4%) Tom Seaver (454 of 647, 70.2%) Chris Sale (162 of 232, 69.8%) Mel Stottlemyre (247 of 356, 69.4%) Ernie Shore (84 of 121, 69.4%) Pete Schneider (109 of 157, 69.4%) Gerrit Cole (139 of 204, 68.1%) Criticisms High ERA 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, which is generally seen as undesirable. 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 among 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. However, this criticism has persisted; in 2022, John Laghezza of The Athletic deemed the quality start "garbage", while proposing alternatives (the "money start" and the "plus start"). Complete games 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." 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