Useless information. Basically you're saying let's throw out all the bad starts, and average starts and see how well guys pitch. What are you talking about? The only starts in question are quality starts, which factors in average starts and of course no bad starts. His comment is simple, a quality start is usually cast aside as a worthwhile stat because pitching to a 4.5 ERA would still allow your pitching to be 'quality', however, as he pointed out this is rarely the case. All the other starts that do not qualify are cast aside in this particular instance. Quality starts correlate to a higher winning percentage as Fred showed the Cubs are doing this year because the average ERA of a quality start is much lower then its quantitative minimum.