SI's Top 20 Pitchers 25 yrs old or younger

Cain is only 8 months older and is ALREADY a very good MLB pitcher. Cain has a 119 ERA+ in 437 MLB innings. Cain has shown an ability to pitch 200 IP seasons, which he has done the last 2 years, without  suffering from adverse effects like injuries.

Phil Hughes' track record is dwarfed by Matt Cain's. Being only slightly younger does not make up for it.

By asking, "How the Hell is Hughes above Cain?" you are showing a West Coast bias.  Or more likely ignorance of how good Phil Hughes could become.

That is the key. Matt Cain already is.

This list is crap. A healthy Francisco Liriano is a better MLB pitcher than Matt Cain. Francisco Liriano is not a better MLB pitcher than Matt Cain. If you cannot pitch in MLB without injuring yourself, you are not an MLB pitcher.

How the hell is Jon Lester a better pitcher than Matt Cain? Lester should not get extra points just because he came back from cancer. Even the most rabid RS fan(boy)(girl, who is actually aware that the west coast exists, would not make that ridiculous claim. That is a ridiculous claim, and alone completely destroys the credibility of this list.

Bonderman better than Cain? Seriously.

Jered Weaver better than Cain?

Even ignoring the fact that these guys are all a couple years older, the records are not better than Cain's.

It appears that the fool who prepared this list is actually rating Cain based on his win/loss total.

And reading the rest of the entries, it does appear that the fool who prepared this list is taking into account wins and losses.

"Kazmir has the makings of a big-time winner. Last season he went 13-9 with a 3.48 ERA and 239 strikeouts for a Rays team that won only 66 games. With more defensive support behind him he could blossom into a 20-game winner in 2008."

Yes, of course, because Kazmir is responsible for his team's D.

And Fausto Carmona and Cole Hamels are not better pitchers than Scott Kazmir.

I don't know a lot about Pitch f/x (maybe xanthan can set me straight if I'm getting something wrong), but from what I can tell Verlander has a better fastball/change combo than Cain, but Cain has by far the better curveball, with a much bigger break and a greater velocity separation from the fastball. And a slider, which Verlander doesn't throw.

But of course Cain doesn't yet have Verlander's command, which isn't too surprising given that he's a year and a half younger. If I had to pick one, I'd say Cain is a greater menace to the rest of the league.

You really think we're at that point with Bonderman? I don't. As that article you linked the other day shows, balls-in-play data is just beginning to become significant after five years. It's entirely possible that Bonderman's career-long ERA underperformance is just a fluke. Somebody's got to be the outlier, after all.

If you want to rank pitchers on the results they've achieved thus far in their careers, then yes, Bonderman's not great. (Though if you do that, you have to take things like Cain's won-loss record into account, and we all know what an illusion that is.) But if you're drafting pitchers for the future (which is the more interesting way to approach this list, imho), Bonderman's stuff and peripherals are every bit as good as Cain's, maybe better. The only reason to discount him is if you have faith that intangibles are constant and unchanging. Or if he's hurt, which I guess is possible, given his poor finish last year.

This is not "just one season". This is his whole career todate. He has underperformed his FIP and xFIP EVERY SINGLE YEAR, in 915 MLB IPs total.

Year by year FIP(ERA): 4.86(5.56), 4.29(4.89), 3.92(4.57), 3.31(4.08), 4.22(5.01).

He has been hit "unlucky" throughout his career, 47 total "unlucky" hits in 5 seasons.

Maybe, FIP and xFIP and K / BB rates do not paint a full portrait of his abilities, it's not all merely luck and random variation?

He is also 2 years older than Cain.