It's hard not to fixate on last week's six-game losing streak as the nadir of the Milwaukee Brewers' so-far disappointing season.

Still, six bad games can't overshadow the fact the supposedly locked-and-loaded Brewers played six weeks of mostly mediocre games before that.

All of which begs the question: Have the Brewers, and many of the rest of us, oversold the talent on this team?

Can home-grown hitters Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy, Corey Hart and Bill Hall consistently do in the major leagues what they did in the minors? Are young starters Manny Parra and Carlos Villanueva anywhere near ready to pitch past the fifth inning? Did general manager Doug Melvin construct a flawed team that is too right-handed at the plate and too dependent on a closer -- Eric Gagne -- who no longer is dominant?

Except for the back end of the bullpen, where Gagne has blown five saves, there is no reason to worry excessively about the Brewers at this stage of the season. Indeed, until pitching phenom Yovani Gallardo was lost for the season, the Brewers were sticking right with the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs in the National League Central.

"I would say that we weren't all-around swinging the bats well (prior to the losing streak), but we were playing good defense, our bullpen was very, very good for the most part and our starting pitching was very good," manager Ned Yost said Friday.

Actually, the numbers so far don't paint quite as rosy a picture as the manager.

Other than Ben Sheets, no starter has recorded a victory since the first week of the season. After Saturday's loss, the team ERA of 4.64 ranked 13th in the NL. Two starters (Villanueva and Dave Bush) had ERAs over 6.00 and two others (Parra and Jeff Suppan) were over 5.00. Only one NL team had allowed more home runs than the Brewers.

The hitting is so far below last year's levels that it has obscured the fact that pitching remains the Brewers' biggest problem. The team that led the majors with 231 home runs last year is 17th this year. The .240 team batting average is 15th in the NL. Weeks, the leadoff hitter, has an average under .200. No wonder the Brewers are incapable of stringing together big innings.

But before we accept the notion the young hitters and pitchers have only done it for one year and, therefore, have proved nothing about their talent level, there are two things to consider.

One, the young hitters clearly are pressing. They know they have to cover for the mediocre pitching and they're way too anxious at the plate.

Remember, the Brewers hit the ball right out of the gate last year. When they started slowly this year, their inexperience showed and they tried even harder, which only made the problem worse.

"It's only natural to press at times, especially when things start to go a little bit south and these guys want to win as bad as they do," Yost said. "They don't like losing. I mean, they are not happy. It's what you want in a group of guys. When they lose ballgames, they don't settle for it. They don't accept it. So they're out there pushing really, really hard to make sure that it doesn't happen. At times you have to just sit back and let your natural ability take over, and these guys all have tremendous natural ability."

The second thing to consider is the rest of the league has adjusted to the young players after seeing many of them for the first time last season.

Hall belted 35 home runs in 2006 and hasn't been the same hitter since. Last year, Fielder, Braun, Hardy and Hart socked 134 home runs. This year, they aren't seeing the same pitches and have a grand total of 12.

"If you watch the games on TV, you see how much these pitchers understand who Ryan Braun is, understand who J.J. Hardy is, understand who Prince Fielder is now, and pitch them like superstars," Yost said. "We talk about this league being a league of adjustments. They came in last year, had big years, the league's adjusted to them and now they (have to) adjust back. ... Once the league understands who you are and knows how dangerous you are, it 's an uphill fight for you."

It will be an uphill -- but not impossible -- fight for the Brewers the rest of this season. Short of a major trade, there aren't many options for the pitching staff, which means it'll be up to the hitters to get hot and carry the team.

Given their consistent success in the past, they should be talented enough to do that.