The young pitchers

The Stats Geek has a good column up today about the incredibly young age of our pitching staff. I have to plead ignorance here, I really had no idea that four of the six guys in the NL to make 12 or more starts this year were Buccos. I mean, I knew we had four guys that were THAT young, but I didn't know there were only two other regular starters in the NL the same age. Considering that, it's not all that surprising that our record is as bad as it is. O'Neill uses the quality start as a good measure of their improvement. By doing that, he quantifies something that's often talked about, the improvement of the staff since early April. The most encouraging thing about the whole column is where the Geek points out that as Bill James wrote, young staffs often lose a lot, which is to be expected. But an extremely young staff like this one can also be a step towards a great staff in the future. We've all seen it this year, flashes of potential that say that in two years a top three of Duke, Maholm, and Snell will be something that NO ONE wants to see. And that is still probably the Pirates quickest route to respectable baseball.