Monday, April 14, 2008
Growing Pains
Since starting out 2008 with a great debut, Phil Hughes has been flat out horrible. In his last two starts he’s gone five innings and allowed 12 hits, 10 runs, walked 7 and struck out 5. His ERA over that span is 16.20. The way the game played out, Hughes was the chief reason the Yankees lost to Boston 8-5 last night, which cost them the series victory in their first matchup of 2008. I don’t know that there’s much choice besides throwing Hughes out there again and hoping he gets things figured out. With Alan Horne hurt the next choice on the farm is Kei Igawa, and I’ll give you three guesses how that would turn out.
Despite Hughes’s awfulness, the Yankees had a fighting chance in the game as they managed to score four runs over the first five innings against Daisuke Matsuzaka. David Aardsma held the yankees scoreless in the sixth and seventh but the Yankees tried to rally in 8th. Jason Giambi homered leading off the inning against Mike Timlin. Giambi is hitting 1.000/1.000/4.000 vs Timlin this year, and .038/.257/.077 against everyone else this year. Jose Molina singled to left but then was removed from the game for a pinch runner. It seemed like a strange move at the time but there turned out to be a logical rationale for it. Melky Cabrera pinch-hit for Alberto Gonzalez and singled and the Yankees had the tying runs on base with no one out. Johnny Damon ended any threat by hitting into a double play. So much for Damon reporting to camp in shape, at least so far. Just think, he’s signed for another year after this one.
Kyle Farnsworth gave Boston an insurance run in the eighth but it didn’t really matter as the Yankees went out meekly in the ninth. It wasn’t all Farn’s fault, as Jorge Posada could not even attempt to throw out any runners so Coco Crisp basically turned a single into a double which allowed two sac flies to score him.
Molina’s hamstring injury causes a real dilemma. It is definitely a DL issue, but the Yankees don’t have an active third catcher on their 40 man roster and Jorge Posada can’t throw. Some kind of roster move will probably be coming today with Chad Moeller getting called up. The logical move is probably putting Francisco Cervelli on the 60 day DL. Moeller makes Molina look like Albert Pujols offensively. He’s projected to “hit” somewhere in the area of .210./.260/.320. As long as Posada can’t throw, Moeller is going to play which doesn’t help an already struggling offense.
In other news, Joba Chamberlain’s father collapsed last night and Joba left the team to be with him. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery for Mr. Chamberlain.
Page 1 of 1 pages: