Phil Hughes has pitched better in 2012 than Freddy Garcia, but that’s not saying much. Watching Hughes pitch is an exercise in frustration.
While Hughes has decent strike out numbers, he let’s up way too many home runs (I think he’s averaging something like over two homers per nine innings), and when you couple that with 28 hits in 21.2 innings… whew. The 23 strike outs are encouraging, but that just makes me think maybe Hughes really does belong in the bullpen. 7 walks in 5 games isn’t terrible, but it sure would be nice if he could limit those if he’s going to give up billion hits. He gave up 3 runs to Baltimore in less than 6 innings… and a fourth runner was allowed to score by the bullpen… that’s pretty crappy. But, I guess Hughes pitched well enough to get another start, even if he can’t handle an offense as lackluster as the Orioles, featuring the hitless Nick Johnson. Oh right, Nick Johnson! We’ll get back to that..
OTHER PROBLEMS:
The middle of the order
Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira are like the nightly version of Phil Hughes. We’re into the second month of the season and these guys just aren’t hitting. Maybe they should start following Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson around – both of those guys are absolutely destroying the baseball. Joe Girardi has already tried the jiggle the lineup trick, and that didn’t do diddly, so at this point… I don’t know, I guess we wait around another week or two and if nothing happens, he’ll have to do it again. I guess they could bat Granderson fourth… yeah, maybe Jeter, Cano, A-Rod, Granderson, Teixeira, Swisher… but that still leaves us with Cano and A-Rod and their 2012 woes right in a row. I usually say things like "These guys are too good to struggle for too long," but Mark Teixeira, despite the homers last year, has changed my thinking a bit on that stance. A-Rod is older and Cano can be extremely streaky. Still, I can cling to the idea that they’ll warm up with the weather.
The outfield
While Phil Hughes didn’t let up any hits to Nick Johnson, Eduardo "Scissorhands" Nunez did. Yeah, when a position player misjudges a routine fly ball but doesn’t get called for an error (he didn’t, right?), I can’t fault the pitcher, which was Rafael Soriano in this case. I guess I can’t blame him too much, because he’s not an outfielder, but I’ve watched him play the infield a bunch, and he doesn’t look like an infielder, either. If you can’t play left field… well, I don’t know what to tell you.
Coming up…
When Andy Pettitte’s busy schedule of training to pitch and testifying in Roger Clemen’s case reaches it’s conclusion, we’ll get the lefty back. Maybe that’ll take another 2 or 3 turns through the Yankees rotation, and if Hughes continues to do those 5+ IP, 3 run starts, I bet he keeps his job – unless David Phelps is lighting the world on fire, which seems unlikely. The Yankees schedule is pretty lean from now until about the All Star break, so it shouldn’t be too tall an order for Hughes. If he’s bad… that will really tell you something.
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Jamie Insalaco
