May 1, 2012 -- 9:21PM, newinn wrote:

Two very bad pitches but all in all a decent start for Hughes. I thought aside from thos two very bad pitches his stuff had great movement. Certainly something to build on

I agree.  I think it was a positive start for Hughes last night.  His velocity was even up and his curve was the best I've seen it in awhile.  Of course the usual longball comes back to haunt him.

One of the biggest problems we’ve noticed with Phil Hughes over the last…forever, really…is his inability to put hitters away once he got to two strikes. It seemed like batters would hit an endless number of foul balls and then take pitches to even the count or get back ahead, and eventually, they’d reach via something hit way too hard for having two strikes. So for last night’s game, I decided to track the results when Hughes got ahead of the hitters, either 0-2 or 1-2, to see how he fared when he got ahead. Of course, I realize now this isn’t exactly scientific without comparing it to his other starts, but this is a jumping off point.

In the first inning, Hughes faced four batters and got ahead 0-2 or 1-2 on all of them. Here’s the sequencing. After falling behind 1-2, Endy Chavez saw five pitches. He fouled off three in a row, took a ball to make it 2-2, then struck out swinging. Next, J.J. Hardy also fell behind 1-2. One pitch later, he grounded out. Third hitter Nick Markakis was down 0-2 before taking a ball, fouling off a pitch, and then blooping one into left (at least that’s what John Sterling called it). Like he did with the first two batters, Hughes got ahead of Adam Jones 1-2, but Jones hit the very next pitch, a deep fly ball to right field for an out.

In the second inning, only Nick Johnson fell behind, and that was in a 1-2 count. He fouled off one pitch, then hit a tapper back to Hughes.

No one fell behind 0-2 or 1-2 in the 3rd.

In the fourth, Hughes got ahead of Chris Davis 0-2 and then threw two balls and allowed Davis to foul one off before Davis flew out to Eduardo Nunez. Wilson Betemit dropped down 0-2, took a ball, and then struck out swinging.

The fifth was a repeat of the third.

In the sixth, Nick Markakis fell behind again, then flew out to Andruw Jones. Adam Jones also fell behind a second time. He took a ball, fouled one off, took another ball, then grounded out to Robinson Cano.

All told, Phil Hughes threw 23 pitches when he was up 0-2 or 1-2 to nine batters. Obviously, nine of those pitches ended the at bat. Six were foul balls. Seven were balls.

Like I said earlier, this isn’t great because I don’t have much to compare these numbers to, but they FEEL better than they’d been in his previous starts. There was some encouragement from this game, as Hughes only walked one and struck out six. But, once again, he couldn’t make it to the sixth inning and surrendered two homers. This start wasn’t great by any means, but it certainly didn’t bury Hughes.

May 2, 2012 -- 12:11PM, yikes wrote:

May 2, 2012 -- 10:37AM, 61in61 wrote:

May 2, 2012 -- 9:54AM, nc01 wrote:

May 2, 2012 -- 9:44AM, NYYGuy wrote:

Like I said I'm not going to blame him for a loss when the Yankees only get 1 run off a stiff like Matusz.

Well, I will blame him. A good pitcher (note that I said good not great) will only give up 1 less run than his offense gives him. He gave up 4 in less than 6. What's that, an ERA of 6?

NC...

 

6.35

Its rather pathetic that a 6+ ERA is an improvement. This is Hughes' 6th year with ML experience he should have found himself by now. Its also pathetic that Hughes represents an important part of the rotation instead of a 5th starter they are experimenting with. If you look at the Rays their worst SP is Matt Moore with a 4.20 ERA, and he will probably be the ace soon.

its a sad day when 4 runs in 5+  innings is considered an improvement, but the reality is...that IS an improvement on his 7-8 runs a game

and he couldnt continue even if he wanted to since he already reached his 100 pitch limit in half the game

If he uses up his 100 pitches in 5+ innings then that too is a problem.

There's been some improvement ... just keep going in the right direction, and things may indeed work out.