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His minor league line, (410 innings), shows:
2.96-ERA; 8.8-K/9; 3.0-BB/9; 0.6-HR/9 (and the eyebrow raiser - 7.3 H/9).
No, he's not Strasburg, but a 8.8 K/9 rate in the minors, almost exclusively as a starter is reasonably impressive - and the kind of number that actually tends to translate decently to the majors.
Gil Meche in 471 minor league innings had:
4.07-ERA; 8.6-K/9; 3.86-BB/9; 0.8-HR/9. Basically, by *EVERY* measure, Olson has been a better minor league pitcher than Meche.
If you said Olson is still very much a work in progress, I'd completely agree. He certainly isn't likely to sustain success with his current peripherals for any length of time. But I'd hardly throw a guy putting up meh #5 SP peripherals into the "sucks" category when he hasn't reached 200 major league innings yet.