Considering he didn’t start pitching in the majors full time until he was 25?
I think your overall point is valid. You just have a lot of stuff in there that distracts. The most important of which is that the player you choose has shoved since he put on a professional uniform.
a better example, and I may be dating myself, is Rick Reuschel. He came up at roughly the same age as Max. He was not a strikeout artist, but he learned to pitch in the big leagues and had an incredibly long career.