Al Leiter, who has obviously forgotten more about pitching than I will ever know, made a comment during the YES broadcast that confused me. He said that Hughes is a two pitch pitcher right now. But in the minors, he threw a two seamer, a four seamer, a curve, and had a developing change.

As SG pointed out, we aren’t seeing the GB rate in the majors to this point. Is it because he doesn’t have a feel for the two seamer yet?

I agree that Hughes’s velocity is likely being affected by the residual effects of two serious leg injuries.

There is also the issue of whether or not the mechanical change (the higher arm slot) that Hughes has undergone from 2006 to 2007 has been beneficial.

Worried about his career on the basis of a couple of rough starts?  Of course not.  Worried about his ability to help the team make the payoffs this year?  Absolutely.

Also, I thought I’d read that he was closer to the 2006 arm slot since coming back from the DL.

You’ve kind of answered your own question. The problem is that people want him to be something more than a 21-year-old, because his potential is so high and it’d be nice if he would realize all of it, right now. That’s not how it works, and in fact 21 is so young that he might NEVER make it. I expect he will, since he’s proven himself right up to the majors and has shown his ability here and there. In all likelihood it’s just a matter of getting his makeup together. But that last part almost never happens at his age.

One thing I like about what my Sox are doing is they’re sending/holding Lester and Buchholz down, even after they’ve pitched well. Buchholz was one and done; Lester is in the rotation but had his spot skipped and got shipped out to Pawtucket this weekend to stay on turn. The message this sends to them is, we’re not depending on you right now. The Yankees need to keep Hughes in the show, since he has nothing to prove anywhere else, but do it in a way that lets him breathe. That’s a conundrum when you have one month to make up ground on the playoffs though.

It was a mediocre start, but he didn’t get a lot of help from the rest of the team. Tommorrow, if we can get to the bullpen before the 6th, I say we win. Detroit has been playing with fire the entire series, and I think they’ll get burned at some point. I also imagine Moose having an amazing “save-my-job” start. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Don’t worry about Phil…he’ll be fine. What I’m worried about is Seattle and how they continue to get the job done.

Pete Abe:

Then I turn on the television to hear Joe Morgan talk for two minutes about what a great job “Sean” Hillenbrand did on some play for the Dodgers against the Mets. Um, that’s Shea Hillenbrand, Joe. He’s been in the majors for a while.

OK, enough ranting.

I now see why sports writers don’t jab at each other. Abraham is right, but he’s also now opened himself up to criticism for the stupid shit he says, which is plentiful, though not as plentiful as Phillips, Morgan or Kruk.

I just can’t believe how many of these guys are clueless ... you would think, somewhere someone would be good at their job, right?

Oh, and I’m not worried about Hughes.  It’d be great if he was pitching better, but he’s our best option at this point and the part that I particularly like is seeing him have a good inning (2nd) after a rough one (1st) or a strike out after giving up a homerun - he’s mature and doesn’t get riled up and abandon his game plan just because things aren’t going well.

From EJ Fagan of MVN: It’s pretty clear now: Philip Hughes is messed up. He is clearly not the player right now that was placed on the top of prospect lists and looked ready to take the major leagues by storm. At the end of 2006, Hughes was comfortably pumping 95 mph fastballs on the corners to Eastern League Batters. Today, Hughes was erratically controlling a fastball that barely topped 91 mph and quite often fell into the high 80s. He was eratically controlling what used to be one of the minor’s best curveballs, and barely was able to throw the changeup.

Am I being alarmist? Maybe. It’s possible. Phil could always undo the damage done to him, or he could still be in the process of adjusting to his new mechanics. I hope that I’m wrong.

this scares me

8 - very interesting stuff, but I think that’s way more than fair use.  A snippet and a link would be more standard practice.

sorry
my bad

i’ll try not to do that again

Carlos wrote that when Hughes first came up earlier this season.  In his most recent analysis of Phil’s mechanics (post-DL), he says his arm slot is lower:

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/mechanics/discussion/tht_chamberlain_or_hughes_who_has_the_better_mechanics/

You’ll also note in that article that the higher arm-slot helps with is curve-ball.  It is entirely possible that the Yankees want Hughes to work with the higher arm-slot to give him more options, and that there was never a plan to COMPLETELY change his delivery.  A lot of pitchers through from different arm slots, and often through the same pitches from different arm slots to get different effects, and keep the hitters off balance.  Moose and Pedro are two current pitchers who do it, and Cone was famous for it.

I’m not going to get too worried about anything with Hughes right now, except maybe if Steinbrenner gets anxious and fires Cashman and trades Hughes for Soriano or something.  Other than that I expect 2009 to be Hughes breakout year where he nails down the top pitching spot - or #2 if Chamberlain nails down the top spot, but then I think it will be a 1 and 1A case - for years to come.

And I think Seattle is starting to fold, and when the Yankees play them the Yanks will sweep and not look back.

Moose and Pedro are two current pitchers who do it, and Cone was famous for it.

That El Duque fellow has been known to change his delivery from one pitch to the next.  And us old farts remember this guy named Tiant—five different pitches from three different arm angles for a total of fifteen pitches.  Well, that’s what they used to say, anyway.

My theory is that its all about the legs. From watching him it seems like he isnt driving as hard with the legs as he did earlier this year/last year. This could be two things. Either the injury meant he didnt build up his leg strength as much as he should have, or he is concerned about re-injuring the leg and thus isnt going after it as hard. Both of these are fixable. Hughes will never throw 98 but I fully expect him back to 93-95 next year.

Remember last year Hughes was better in the second half, this year he didnt have the first half to help him build up.

i’m not worried about Phil.  i expect the yankees to work on his mechanics over the winter.  right now, he is just here to get more experience and hold down the #5 spot. 

if everyone on the internet is talking about the difference in his mechanics, surely the yankees are aware of it.  he’s going to have to throw some innings this winter to make up for the 3 months he lost this year, and hopefully things will start to click for him.

the yankees need to tread water for another week, and then they can hopefully make their move in the WC race.

as bad as this weekend was, Seattle kept it from being disastrous.

I’m hoping this turns out like the Rosalita lyric:  “Some day we’ll look back and this will all seem funny.”

oh your papa says he knows that i don’t have any money.

I listened to the game on the radio and the Tigers announcers said Hughes was throwing slightly harder the last three innings.  I also noticed more troubling was him falling behind early in the count on almost every hitter it seemed. Strangely though, he managed to rally to retire most everyone on a long fly or K. The more disappointing part was the Yanks offense once again not being able to close a one run game. To some degree at some point the manager’s decisions play into these close games. Allowing lefty on lefty situations (waiting to make substitutions) and counting on rallies in the last two innnings, not trying to steal a base, etc. It looked to me that Leyland knew exactly what needed to be done and made all the right moves at the right times.  I didn’t stay up on Friday night once the Yanks had come back and tied at 6. For some reason I was confident that the Tigers would win that one and sure enough that’s exactly what happened. Crazy though, umpires starting a game at past 10 Eastern.

“Tommorrow, if we can get to the bullpen before the 6th, I say we win.”

I haven’t seen much evidence in this series myself to feel comfortable with the Yanks doing damage to this team’s pen. Jeter must be seriously injured or just getting old. He hasn’t hit a fastball to the warning track in months it seems. He poked an opposite field homer Aug 1 in NY, but is late on every fastball, normally missing completely or fouling back. He better step up his game for the team to have any chance at the card.  I’m not nearly as confident as some of you at least at this point.

i also don’t understand why giambi hasn’t been playing consistently.

everytime he plays he hits a HR.  then he sits for 2 days.  it’s just bizarre.

everytime he plays he hits a HR.  then he sits for 2 days.  it’s just bizarre.

Did you hear?  Home runs don’t win games, small ball does.  Torre keeps giving Giambi a chance to prove he knows how to win, but Giambi keeps going and hitting those homers.  Torre is going to keep the tough-love up until Giambi figures it out and starts bunting with runners on.

I really need to know why there seems to be a large number of Red Sox fans here in Rochester!  Every time we play the Pawsox, there seems to be more people cheering for them then for our home team (Red Wings).  There’s just something wrong with that.

Lar—what’ll you give me to not tell Trisha all the cute “when Larry was a kid” stories? *evil laugh*

Where’s the dancing banana?

How come this blog never reaches 1000 comments?

Here’s my position on Hughes’ start against the Tigers:

He lost because he made a rookie mistake in the first. With a man on first and two outs, you don’t give Carlos Guillen anything good to hit. The guys after him in the lineup range from terrible to not major league ready. See if Guillen will chase something 3-1 and, if not, be happy with the walk and go after Rodriguez who looks to be 70-80% cooked.

isn’t that posada’s job? 

same thing with calling that 1st pitch curveball to Jeff Mathis.

Ultimately, I expect the pitcher to throw the right pitches. And it’s possible that Posada wanted a pitch off the plate, but Hughes didn’t get it there. Hughes is learning and that kind of mistake will come less frequently as time goes on. If there’s one thing his track record indicates, it’s that Hughes adapts well.

I am worried about Hughes not just because of the results, my concern is his velocity on his FB that is 5 mph slower than one year ago and that he is not mixing his pitches, he throws 95% of the time 4 seamers and curveballs. He is not throwing his 2 seamer to get groundballs and he throws a changeup once every 3 innings. I like the way he pitches, his confidence on the mound but his stuff is not what I expected.

How come this blog never reaches 1000 comments?

Most readers don’t comment, and it’s quality over quantity thing I think.  I’d rather read 30-50 somewhat interesting comments than 500+ of garbage, and I think most of the readers here feel the same way.

isn’t that posada’s job?

It was Molina yesterday, not Posado.

I like the way he pitches, his confidence on the mound but his stuff is not what I expected.

I agree, I expected better physical stuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if with the leg issues he had earlier that never comes back this season.  Since he didn’t have an arm injury I’d expect an offseason of rehab to help him get back to that.

Ok, first of all, dakranker, Hughes never sat at 95.  For some reason, that has spread all over the place.  Hughes has always sat around 93, going anywhere from 90-95.  Yesterday he was in that range, and as mentioned above, he was around 93 for the last three innings.  Hughes tends to slow down and speed up his FB depending on location and batter—he has also said he CAN throw harder, but chooses control instead.

Secondly, the post written by EJ from MVN IS alarmist, and actually gets some things wrong.  Hughes has said himself he changed the arm angle before going to Trenton, so it doesn’t account for any dramatic difference between GB #s. 

If you look at the differences between Hughes in the two starts before injury and the starts since you see a pitcher who has been sapped of strength from an injury to the place where he generates it from and a lack of innings (remember he didn’t throw in the offseason either). Plus, as mentioned above, despite Hughes having a 4 seamer, 2 seamers, curve, slider and change as all plus pitches, the game plan has been 90% 2 seamers and 10% curves.  period.  The 2 seemer is a much slower pitch than the 4 seamer but moves downward a bit more.

I don’t know why this has been the pitch selection, it might be to work on Hughes regaining his strength without cranking out the slider before he is 100% trustworthy of his legs.  I don’t know why no changeup really though.

Finally, Hughes is 21.  he is 6 years away from his prime and has yet to log close to 200 innings.  He basically lost this entire year to injury, and this was a key year for his development.  He should pitch in the AFL, and if not, you are looking at next year as another development year as well…

It was Molina yesterday, not Posado.

good point.

Most readers don’t comment, and it’s quality over quantity thing I think.  I’d rather read 30-50 somewhat interesting comments than 500+ of garbage, and I think most of the readers here feel the same way.

the best part of this site is that most of the comments are NOT coming from the type of morons that post on Abraham’s blog.  this does not include some of the people from here that post over there, and it also doesn’t apply to *some* of the regulars over there, but for the most part the quality of the comments over there is 1 notch below awful.

In addition to the odd 2-pitch restriction with Phil, there’s Henn’s absurd down and in slider to Guillen on Friday night. This is either very bad scouting or very bad coaching. Unfortunately, it’s probably both. You work inside early in the count to set up hitters for the stuff away later in the count. You don’t throw anything inner half on a “go” pitch, such as a 2 strike count. This is fundamental yet Yankees pitchers have been doing this since Mel was coaching. Kaat used to bemoan it (even though he would never explicitly call out Mel or Joe for this).

the best part of this site is that most of the comments are NOT coming from the type of morons that post on Abraham’s blog.

somehow i feel like the exception.

Hughes overrated, Alex is unclutch, Abreu sucks, trade Melky, Cano is playing way over his head, Jeter plays stellar defense, Giambi clogs bases, Damon sucks, Mo is losing it, Torre sucks, Damon sucks, Farnsworth sucks, Betemit is AAAA player, Phillips is AAAA player, Mussina sucks, Yankees suck.

Otherwise, uh, panic.

there’s Henn’s absurd down and in slider to Guillen on Friday night.

Watching the highlights, that was so not a strike, I guess Guillen is a free swinger so it might have been in his zone, but it seem like an okay, though heartbreaking, pitch.  I just wished Torre pitched some of the guys for more than one freakin inning.

Posted this on a few threads here:

Brackman to have surgery.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08272007/sports/yankees/yanks__top_pick_to_have_surger.htm