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Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Yankees Lost a Series?

With the way the team has been playing for the past month and a half, a series loss comes as a shock. However, given that Jeff Karstens took the mound on Tuesday and that Baltimore put Erik Bedard on the mound on Wednesday, this was not so shocking.

Anyway, I was at the game yesterday and was surprised to find a lot of negativity regarding Hughes during the liveblog/game chatter when I came home. Now, my vantage point was from at an angle behind home plate, so I can’t comment on whether or not he was really missing the zone or just getting squeezed, but his raw stuff seemed pretty good yesterday. The curveball was terrific, he used his change sparsely for a couple easy fly balls, and his fastball seemed to be fine (90-93 for his entire outing, including the final frame). The only time the crowd really got on him was the play where he dropped the ball attempting to cover first. The hits he was giving up were, for the most part, very weak and/or helped by the defense. The one at bat where it seemed an Oriole hitter was really on his stuff was Millar’s final at bat where he hit rocket after rocket foul down the LF line. Hopefully, Hughes is better next time out, or at least gets better results.

-On the issue of velocity…while I noticed the velocity dip this year, I forgot that Carlos Gomez had attributed it to a change in his arm angle. While 90-93 is good enough, if you can maintain it, which he’s been steadily improving on, 92-95 would be, if nothing else, sexier.

-On the issue of fastball types…Hughes does throw both a 2-seam and 4-seam fastball, so sometimes when you see those 88s, it’s not fatigue it’s a 2-seamer.

-Edwar was very very good. I wonder if he’s going to have to wait 12 days to pitch again.

-Henn was very good as well. He’s struggled throwing strikes all year, but did a good job of that yesterday. He has good enough stuff from the left-side where if he just throws strikes, he’s going to be a very serviceable reliever. It’s just a question of whether his control will be there consistently.

-Marcos Vechionacci is closing out the year with a hot streak. This might be enough to get him promoted to Trenton to start ‘08. Unfortunately, his year has still been terribly disappointing. While it’s great that his glove continues to get rave reviews, at some point he’s going to have to start hitting. If this year didn’t kill his prospect status, one more year of not hitting will.

-Looks like the FSL has figured out Austin Jackson. He’s still had a nice year and made some real improvement, but perhaps not as much as it seemed when he was hitting everything a couple weeks ago.