Gavin Floyd once again flirted with a no-hitter Tuesday night to help the White Sox snap a 6-game losing streak. It was the third time this season that he's taken a no-hitter past the 5th inning.

How's he doing it?

Unfortunately, I have no idea. Before spring training, many of us were quite high on Floyd's future, based largely on the strength of his final 6 starts last season. During those 6 starts, Gavin laid a blue print for how he could become an effective major league pitcher. He fell behind John Danks, however, after a series of mediocre spring training performances. Here's what I had to say about Floyd in my season preview for The Hardball Times.

The final spot in the rotation will be filled by Floyd, about whom I could spout the same trivial anecdotes of increased confidence or new approaches, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. Floyd is what he is, a failed prospect who gives up far too many home runs to succeed in homer-friendly US Cellular Field. Gavin will have to succeed by keeping his walk total low, and keeping his strikeout total up. He’ll never be the pitcher the Phillies once thought he would be, but he could turn into a serviceable control-type back-end starter. His last six starts last season have given the Sox some (misplaced?) hope.

As you sit in front of your computer today, Floyd isn't exactly striking batters out (4.3 K/9) and is walking too many men (4.1 BB/9). He's been successful by keeping the ball in the park (.9 HR/9) and getting extraordinarily lucky on balls in play (.147 BABIP) or extraordinarily good defense behind him (.860 DER), depending on your view.

Rotoworld  pointed out, based on the above numbers, that now would be a good time to sell on Gavin Floyd. The Sox aren't playing fantasy baseball, however. This is the big leagues. You can't just trade a valuable young player because he has overachieved in the early season.

What can we expect for the rest of the season?

This is where things get tricky. I'd like to draw the comparison to '05 Jon Garland, who took a big step forward based in large part to a great first 8 starts. But Garland had better peripherals and a longer history of at least being average on his side. Floyd has never had any sustained success at the big league level.

At the time, I argued that Garland had reached a new level. I'm not so sure I can say the same of Floyd. So I'd like to point to our community projection for Floyd. My opinion of Floyd hasn't changed much from when we conducted this projection, I suspect most of yours haven't either. So let's see what happens when we simply add the projection, which was hedged by a few people projecting Gavin to flame out quickly, to Gavin's current line.

That's essentially the line which we came to expect from Jon Garland. He takes a little different route to get there, but the 4.48 ERA, which is above average given the run environment of USCF, the WHIP, the HR rate, are all quite similar to typical Garland.

I think most of us will take that.

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Floyd wasn't the only young hurler in the White Sox organization who flirted with a no-hitter Tuesday. The Sox top 2007 draft pick, Aaron Poreda, took a no-hitter into the 6th inning, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out seven in 7 innings pitched.

I crapped out of yesterday's recap duties, so I thought I'd make it up to you with a couple of pitching notes on the young season. What have we learned?

• John Danks has transformed himself into a ground ball pitcher with the additions of a cutter. He's not going to be channeling Chien-Ming Wang any time soon, but through 4 games he has a ground ball rate quite similar to that of Jon Garland, except Danks can miss some bats.

  Quick math might make it seem like Danks' K-rate has dropped this season (7.06 K/9 in '07 vs. 6.08 K/9 in '08), but upon closer inspection Danks appears to have retained all of his K-inducing talents. Using the raw total K/TBF (Total Batters Faced), Danks strikeout rate has declined from 17.5% to 17.2%, a negligibly small amount given the sample size of just 4 starts.

  Danks is also doing one other thing exceedingly well, unsustainably well, in fact. The White Sox pitching staff as a whole has joined him. I'd get into specifics, but I'm superstitious and don't wish to throw my jinx their way. I'm pretty sure you can figure it out for yourself anyway.

• If a pitcher signs a 4-year contract, expect him to have his starts pushed back as much as possible. Mark Buehrle is of to a rough start, and the Sox are taking every opportunity to push his spot in the rotation back, all the while claiming he is perfectly healthy. I see no reason (yet) to doubt them, and attribute Buehrle's extra rest as a means to protect their long-term investment. The Sox have been extremely reluctant, with good reason, to hand out long-term contracts to pitchers, and I assume they have some data (or at least a theory) that the extra rest will help ensure Buehrle's effectiveness not just in August and September, but until August and September of '11.

  On the mound, Buehrle has allowed a troubling 35 hits in just 22+ innings pitched, which is surprising because he looked spectacular in spring training. I think we can attribute at least some of this to bad luck, Buehrle has allowed an astounding .384 BABIP so far. But there are at least two warning signs I can see in the data from FanGraphs; 1) Buehrle's K-rate 11% is tied with his poor '06 campaign for the lowest in his career, and 2) take a look at the pitch-type data. Buehrle is throwing about 33% fewer fastballs so far in the early going, and it looks most of those fastballs have been replaced with cutters, which have almost doubled in frequency. I don't know if there's enough data from which to draw any concrete solutions, but it's something to keep an eye on as the season continues.