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Another fave milestone in "ancient" science being...
Newton's Prism. Before Newton, scientists believed that if you passed a beam of light through (say) orange-colored glass, then you "stained" a "pure" white light.
Newton secured a dark room and two prisms. He split the light with the first prism, and noted that after it went back through the second prism, it was white again. He concluded that white was the "mongrel," the mixed soup, as it were.
Then he hit the second prism with each color individually, and noted that from red to blue, each ray was bent more by the second prism. Light consisted of "rayes differently frangible."
EM spectrum theory began at this point, and scientists of ordinary talent could work within Newton's paradigm to begin cataloging the properties of light.
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On pages 14-15 of issue 3 in the 1982 Baseball Analyst, Dick O'Brien puts a prism onto [Rookie Starting Pitchers] and splits them out into youngest, young, and not so young. (Actually, into about seven categories)
Amazingly, he finds that --- > assuming that a given pitcher is going to throw plenty of ML innings, then --- > the younger he is as a rookie, the better off he is in terms of burnout. The 20-year-old rookies dropped off less than the 25-year-old rookies. (!?)
There has been data counter to this. I'm not sure of what the truth is. But who was the very young rookie pitcher in the Mariners' recent past? Felix Hernandez, who debuted in the majors at only 19, and who has been injury-free* despite 190-250 inning seasons every year since.
If you go back into baseball history, you find any number of outstanding 19- and 20-year-old starting pitchers. These guys frequently (1) landed with a splash, and (2) stayed healthy. Most of the pitchers on the career IP leaderboards were guys who came up around age 20 -- Walter Johnson at 19, Nolan Ryan at 19, Don Sutton at 21, Steve Carlton at 20, Bert Blyleven at 19. Felix at 19.
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My own idea here is simply that --- > the normal pitcher only has so many bullets in the gun. If he's throwing good, like Pineda is now, you might as well use the bullets while he has them. Who knows if Michael Pineda will be down to 91 mph in four years? Freddy Garcia and Ismael Valdes were.
James Paxton, Danny Hultzen, even Taijuan Walker... for me, the minute that each man is one of your 5 best starters, he is in there. If the Mariners' best 2012 rotation is those three guys plus Felix and Pineda, well, gimme a season ticket, b'wana.
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