Six weeks ago, I predicted the Pirates would win more often than they lost after Memorial Day.

Wrong again, Calculator Breath.

The Pirates have been 18-27 since Memorial Day, 10-24 since the column ran, and 6-18 for the past 30 days. Forget .500. The Pirates are nine games under .400, and at least that many losses beyond making The Geek look unusually stupid.

The failure isn't hard to figure. As Bob Smizik said in his Sunday column, the biggest problem is starting pitching.

I was premature in suggesting that an unusually young rotation had settled down. The average National League team gives up 4.97 runs every nine innings (4.56 earned), according to Baseball Prospectus. In the past 30 days, this staff has given up 6.57 (6.00 earned).

Talk all you like about timely hitting, but it's hard to win when you give up six or seven runs per game. Eleven times this season, the Pirates have scored at least six runs and lost. That includes three of the past eight losses.

The starters' downturn reversed a trend that had seemed so encouraging early in June. In the first 31 starts after May 1, the Pirates' rotation had quality starts 16 times. (A quality start means a pitcher goes six innings and gives up three earned runs or fewer.) In the past 21 starts, the Pirates have had three.

Those of us who asked for the Pirates to go young, to let "the kids" struggle and learn, cannot protest too much. You cannot go much younger than four starters aged 24 or less, and the Pirates could get still younger if Kip Wells, 29, is replaced with Oliver Perez, 24.

Every fan knows their collective problem. None consistently throws strikes. Look only at the walks and strikeouts from starters since Memorial Day:

That may seem a mere fractional difference, but only if the aspiration is for average pitching. If the goal is to be good, this crew is a long way off. This may never be a high-strikeout rotation, but it must minimize its walks. It also needs better defense on the right side of the ballfield, but that's a column for another day.

Other young rotations have struggled on the path to success, such as the 1990 Braves and the 2003 Tigers. Jeremy Bonderman was 31-45 with a 4.98 ERA in his first 89 starts for the Tigers coming into this season. Now, at 23, Bonderman is 9-4 with a 3.59 ERA and pitching for a team that catapulted from 12 consecutive losing seasons to the best record in baseball.

Is there a Bonderman in this bunch? Could there be two? Three? None? The rest of the season is about finding out.

In an odd sense, the good news is that bad pitching has obscured some good hitting. You know about Freddy Sanchez, but Jose Bautista has hit .291 with a .363 on-base average and .543 slugging average in 171 plate appearances since Memorial Day. Ronny Paulino has hit .329/.375/.421 in 152 plate appearances in that time, as he continues to hit more than enough for a catcher. Despite the pre-All Star slump by Jason Bay, and Jack Wilson's miserable June, Pirates position players combined for a .290/.349/.450 average in 45 games from May 26 through July 15.

A thin slice of that comes from a couple of veterans who never should have been on the team. Joe Randa has hit .391/.431/.543, better than Sanchez, albeit in just 51 plate appearances. Jose Hernandez has hit .429/.469/.643 in 32 plate appearances.

That makes them terrific bench players, which would be wonderful news if this were a good team. For Pirates fans, the best hope is that their recent work gives the old men value in a trade package.

That kind of thing has been said for the past 13 Pittsburgh summers, but this year has Sanchez, Bautista and Paulino providing more than anyone expected when the season began. If they stay on that path in the second half, and two or three starters mature, and the team breaks tradition this winter and spends money on players who are not demonstrably worse than ones they already have, then this won't be another lost season.

It's just going to feel like one. And, yes, those are a lot of ifs.