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Saturday, August 4, 2007

The Return of Hughes

So, as you may have heard, Phil Hughes made his return this afternoon. Hughes’ final line looks pretty poor, 4.1-7-6-6-2-5, but there was some good and bad mixed in there. The good is that Phil was pretty good through this first 4 innings. He needs to become more economical, but he was getting the job done. The bad is that, for whatever reason, he isn’t maintaining his velocity. He was throwing in the low 90s for the first couple innings, but then dropped to 88-91. I’m not sure what to make of this at the present time. I was able to watch Hughes in person last year, as well as get reports from others who attended his games, and he was always able to maintain his velocity. I’m hoping this is a matter of him just needing to get some innings under his belt. The one piece of evidence for this viewpoint would be that the 90-93, touching 94 that he was throwing in his first couple innings was better velocity than he had shown at any point in his first two ML starts.

Anyway, the velocity loss wasn’t much of a problem for Hughes until he began missing his spots with his fastball. The biggest example of this would be the home run. Phil missing spots with his fastball also wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if he was commanding his curveball, which he wasn’t. The change-up also wasn’t there today. So, Hughes wasn’t good today, but the command problems are solvable and hopefully the velocity is as well.

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Meanwhile, in the minors...Austin Jackson is for real. He’s cut down on his K rate a ton and is drilling the ball. By the end of the season you could say he’s a better prospect than Tabata and get taken seriously. Hell, if you’re the aggressive type, you might even be able to pull it off now.

In addition, the Joba Chamberlain Relief Project is going swimmingly. Joba made his third relief appearance, this one a 2-inning outing. In his 2 innings Joba gave up 1 hit and struck out 5. He has 18 Ks in 8 AAA innings. I fully expect him to be with the team by the end of the week. I might not love the idea of him being in the pen, but at least it gives me another reason to watch.