More about the A’s history-making rotation
Posted By Jeff Fletcher on March 30, 2009 2:45 pm
A few days ago I looked at how rare it would be if the A’s had two starters making their debut in the season-opening rotation, but I found an even better stat nugget today.
All five of the A’s projected starters are 25 or younger. (The oldest is Dallas Braden, who turns 26 on Aug. 13.) There has never been a team in baseball history (since 1901, anyway) to give the ball to five starers 25 or younger at least 25 times in a season. Here’s the list. (Remember that teams used four-man rotations up till the 1970s, so a team couldn’t really have five regular starters.)
Anyway, if you look at the list of teams that had three or four young starters, you’ll see that most of those teams were not very good, but they did foreshadow some good teams (like the 1989 Braves, 2002 White Sox and 2003 Tigers). The 2001 A’s are on that list, and they won 102 games.
nice research Jeff
It would be nice to see some veteran leadership but having seen Anderson and Cahill pitch a couple of times I am not too worried. Braden has the right mental stuff and I think Eveland’s mechanical changes toward the end of the year bode well for him. If Gallagher can find some control he will be good also.
I highly doubt five different A’s will each make 25 starts, regardless of age. When you figure Duchscherer, who’s not 25, could potentially start a bunch of games, this becomes even less likely.
Nick, I agree it’s not too likely that the A’s will get 25 starts from five of them, but as you see it’s pretty rare to have four, or even three.