Comparing Davies to Smoltz, Glavine

Here's an interesting quote from Dayton Moore that appears in the Star today regarding the recent acquisition of Kyle Davies:

“He’s a young pitcher who is trying to establish himself in the major leagues,” Moore said. “For young pitchers, I’ve never looked a lot at their numbers. If you did, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine and many others would never have gotten off the ground.”

In spite of Moore's distrust of numbers, let's look at some numbers anyway and do a comparison. Here are the combined stats for each respective pitcher's first three seasons:

	W-L	ERA	WHIP	GS
Smoltz	28-29	3.68	1.24	75
Glavine	23-29	4.29	1.30	72
Davies	14-21	6.15	1.71	45

Neither Smoltz nor Glavine had Cy Young-like numbers in their first three seasons, but who among us wouldn't insert those youngsters into our rotation today? And Davies clearly is off to a worse start. That being said, he is young (23) and Moore certainly is familiar with him. And so far, Moore hasn't given us a reason to distrust him, so let's see what Davies does.