Jekyll and Hyde

It's an old movie, but the same story is playing out every 5 days for the San Francisco Giants.

His name is Barry Zito, and there seems to be no middle ground. He's either really, really good or really, really bad.

I went through Zito's stats for the 2009 season, and frankly, I was amazed.

As of this writing, he's started 20 times this year. Using the "quality start" yardstick (3 or fewer earned runs in 6 innings), I've categorized 11 of the starts as "good" and 9 as "bad". In fact, one of the "good" starts wasn't technically a "quality start" because Zito only went 5 innings, but he did get a win and gave up only 1 earned run.

Anyway, here's the poop: In his good starts (covering 74.2 innings), Zito has a 1.81 ERA! In his bad starts (covering 44.2 innings), it's 9.47!

That "good game" ERA would be the best in the major leagues (Kansas City's Zach Greinke is the current leader at 2.08). The "bad game" 9.47...well, it stinks.