PHOENIX -- Almost six weeks into the season, the D-backs' kiddy corps has been struggling mightily. And with a nine-game road trip to Houston, Colorado and Pittsburgh in the offing beginning Friday night at Minute Maid Park, it's not too early to wonder how long those struggles will continue to run.

The D-backs are committed to this youth movement, general manager Josh Byrnes and manager Bob Melvin said during extensive interviews this week.

"I'm certainly not going to panic, these are our guys," Melvin said during a homestand that ended with his club losing on Wednesday for the sixth time in the last nine games. "As the season goes along, I still believe they're all going to hit."

No matter, there's no place else for Melvin to go. All the Minor League gems are in the Major Leagues right now and there's no room within the team's budget to replace them from outside the organization.

But these are the hard facts: Alberto Callaspo is hitting .215; Stephen Drew has slumped to .234; Conor Jackson is at .232; Miguel Montero is at .245; Carlos Quentin is batting .214; Chris Snyder is at .213 and Chris Young has actually raised his average recently to .234.

Of the team's 27 home runs, 15 have been hit by the veterans: Tony Clark, Orlando Hudson and Eric Byrnes, who have five apiece. Young has four, but no one else has any more than two.

The offense -- hitting .243 -- entered Thursday as the fifth worst in the National League. Six NL teams had hit fewer home runs. Three teams had scored fewer than Arizona's 140 runs.

It all begs these questions: Was the talent over-evaluated or the kids rushed up too soon?

"No and no," GM Byrnes said. "Am I concerned about it? Yes and no. We've faced a lot of good pitching. A high percentage of our games have been against teams with very good ERAs independent of facing us. We had a nice winning streak [six in a row] against good pitching and then followed that up with a tough week. I think we'll get better as the year goes on, although it's been a struggle so far."

To be sure, six weeks is certainly not enough of a window to judge the depth of this talent pool. And for better or worse, the D-backs are committed to taking the time.

"The tell-tale sign would be two or three years from now," said Clark, who is a free agent after the season and may not be around to see it. "The young ballplayers that we have are very talented. But at the same time, they're learning on the fly."

The D-backs put themselves in this position financially when the organization was under different control, giving far too many deferred contracts to veteran players and spending far too much money on cost overruns when Chase Field was under construction more than a decade ago.

The club is still paying those bills and is one the most highly leveraged in MLB.

Ken Kendrick and Jeff Moorad took direct control of the franchise in 2004 and proceeded to make their own mistakes. Of an Opening Day payroll of just a little more than $52 million, close to a fifth of that figure is being paid to former D-backs acquired by this group now playing with other teams: Russ Ortiz (Giants), Shawn Green (Mets), Jorge Julio (Marlins), and Javier Vazquez (White Sox).

Because expenditures by the D-backs are monitored by Major League Baseball and the franchise must stay in compliance with strict collectively bargained financial rules, there's little wiggle room. Thus, a veteran like Luis Gonzalez was allowed to leave for the Dodgers via free agency this past offseason, because management determined that he was not affordable within constraints of the budget and his own desire to continue starting in left field.

At the same time, Byrnes, who ultimately replaced the departed Joe Garagiola Jr. as GM, judged that Quentin and Young, in particular, would be ready to fill that void in the outfield.

In essence, though, Byrnes didn't replace Gonzalez (.271 with 52 doubles, 15 homers and 73 RBIs last year) with a comparable veteran Major League hitter. The same can be said for the departure of catcher Johnny Estrada (.302 with 26 doubles, 11 homers and 71 RBIs in 2006), who was dispatched to Milwaukee in the deal that netted left-hander Doug Davis.

Byrnes acquired Estrada from Atlanta for two low-level pitchers after the 2005 season largely because Snyder had hit .202 with six homers and 28 RBIs in 115 games as the starting catcher. As a backup to Estrada last season, Snyder hit .277 with six homers and 32 RBIs in 61 games, which may just be his speed. This year, it's been back to the future again behind the plate as Snyder struggles and Montero develops.

A wholesale blanketing of young position players in the starting lineup is rare in the Major Leagues. It usually happens piecemeal with one or two youngsters taking over key spots. The Padres, for example, gave rookie third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff nearly the season's first month to break out of a horrific slump. It never happened. He's hitting .108 with a homer and eight RBIs and has finally been benched in lieu of journeymen Russell Branyan and Geoff Blum.

The Diamondbacks don't have that luxury or even that kind of modest veteran depth.

"Teams that sustain success, regardless of payroll, find a way to grow their own talent," Byrnes said. "In our case, a lot of it was concentrated in Triple-A last year. Piece-by-piece, I think they all passed the Minor League test. And guys like Drew, Quentin and Jackson had fairly extended Major League playing time last year and did very well. It's tough to say that, with more money, the team would look differently."

The good news is that the D-backs hit the road at 19-17 and are only two games behind the Dodgers in the NL West. The bad news is that the road may get bumpier before it gets smoother. Meanwhile, there are still 126 games to determine how long these struggles will run.