Blue Jays send the kiddies to the mound

There was a time – before 21-year-olds Daniel Norris and Aaron Sanchez were born, well before 20-year-olds Miguel Castro and Roberto Osuna came into being and even before the birth of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise that keeps all four pitchers on the major league staff – when what they were doing wouldn’t have been considered all that unusual.

The 1950 Phillies get all the attention as the then-proclaimed “Whiz Kids,” but 10 years later, there was an Orioles team that made that pennant-winning Phillies bunch look like they were getting ready to watch whatever old people watched before “Wheel of Fortune” was on the air.

The 1960 Orioles’ rotation, at various points in the season, consisted of the young guys: 21-year-olds Milt Pappas, Jerry Walker and Jack Fisher, the veterans: 22-year-olds Chuck Estrada and Steve Barber and their dad: 35-year-old Hal Brown. They went 89-65 to finish in second place, and while second place doesn’t usually get you a nickname, these O’s went by the “Kiddie Corps” and still hold the record for the most innings pitched by pitchers under the age of 22 with 912.

It’s a phenomenon we don’t see anymore. Sure there are always the Felix Hernandezes, the Jose Fernandezes and the Madison Bumgarners as well as the tier of non-stars who were just deemed ready. But their concentration at young ages is hardly what it used to be, and that’s what makes the Blue Jays stand out with their four 22-and-unders taking the mound opening week.

The 2014 season was a historic nadir for young pitching, one whose only comparable was at wartime when the youngest were often off fighting. The percentage of innings pitched by 22-and-unders across Major League Baseball had never fallen below 3 percent until 1945 and then reached an all-time low of 1.7 percent the following season.

Since the war and the subsequent recovery that had the percentages in the low teens for most of the 1960s, it’s been mostly downhill for the last 50 years. But last year, the percentage cratered, from a pretty consistent 4-5 percent over the last decade to tying that record with only 1.7 percent of the innings thrown by the youths.

Percentage of MLB innings that were thrown by 22-and-under pitchers

The 725 innings thrown by 22-and-unders last year were obviously hurt a little bit by Fernandez’s injury, but even 100 more innings from the Marlins phenom wouldn’t have brought the 30-team total to the number reached by the 1960 Orioles alone.

It’s something that should have some year-to-year correlation, but with so many graduations from that list, you can have one-year swings, and the Blue Jays are single-handedly trying to swing one.

With their high-level prospects ready to go after brief cameos last year and their bullpen in such dire need of help that they took chances on the kids, the Blue Jays were responsible for half of the eight 22-and-under pitchers to take the mound in the first week of the season.

Much of the reason that we don’t see more and much of the reason for the big drop is the increasing attention paid to service time. Players are often held back for the equivalent of a couple dozen innings if it gets them to the threshold for a seventh year under team control or maybe closer to 70-90 if it gets them to a point where they avoid Super 2 status. This wasn’t an issue with the two players for whom it would be a concern – the starters Sanchez and Norris – going into spring training as both got their calls late last year, had already started their clocks and weren’t pushed aside in free agency this year.

They’re the ones whom the Blue Jays expect to build future rotations around, which is really the reason you’d even look at what amount to pieces of trivia like this. Both rookies in eligibility, the harder-throwing righty Sanchez and the well-rounded lefty Norris ranked 1-2 on BP’s Blue Jays Top 10 prospect list this offseason and could be looking at full seasons in the rotation.

As the list of recent teams that had two 22-and-under qualified starters helps to illustrate, this is no guarantee of having your Spahn and Sain or your Koufax or Drysdale for a decade to come. But you generally get something pretty valuable out of the good fortune of this situation, even if it’s just one guy.

A lot of this is an intersection of circumstances, but there is something meaningful in here that we can be watching this year. It is encouraging, as part of a group of writers and viewers who as house style look down upon many of the decisions as to who will close, to see a team not beholden to experience or the “proven closer” myth to choose theirs.

Two 22-and-under qualified starters – last 30 years

When the Jays hooked Brett Cecil after a blown save against the Yankees, they didn’t do what a lot of contenders would do – go out and get Rafael Soriano or another freely available retread or just promote a guy like Aaron Loup with some innings under his belt. In Castro, they went with the guy who they figured had the best shot at closing down high-leverage situations (whether the closer actually gets the highest leverage situations is a topic for another day and plenty of days in the past, but we’re at least getting there).

Nobody under 22 has closed with any regularity since Neftali Feliz in 2009 and nobody as young as Castro ever has been a regular closer.

But on a pitching staff that has failed to keep pace with a playoff-capable offense in recent years, it’s on the youngest of the young guys to change that balance.

Ages calculated as of July 1 as is convention. Thanks to Rob McQuown of Baseball Prospectus and the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index for research assistance.