Sunday, August 26, 2007
Should We Be Worried about Phil Hughes?
Consider the following list of pitchers:Jeremy Bonderman
Roger Clemens
Jon Garland
Tom Glavine
Roy Halladay
Al Leiter
Greg Maddux
Jake Peavy
Brad Penny
Jose Rijo
C.C. Sabathia
Johan Santana
John Smiley
John Smoltz
Jeff Suppan
Javier Vazquez
Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is that they've all been decent to great pitchers in MLB, varying from league average inning-eaters to future Hall of Famers and everything in between. The other thing that this group of pitchers has in common is that they all debuted in the majors by the age of 22.
Here's how this group of pitchers did collectively prior to turning 23.
| Age | W | L | RA | ERA | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | HR+ | BB+ | K+ |
| <23 | 194 | 225 | 5.14 | 4.68 | 759 | 3556.1 | 3620 | 2031 | 1850 | 398 | 1532 | 2596 | 90 | 105 | 93 | 106 |
ERA+, HR+, BB+, and K+ are how the pitchers' ERA, HR rate, BB rate, and K rate compared to league average. 100 is exactly average, less than 100 is worse than average, greater than 100 is better than average.
Here's how that same group of pitchers has done since turning 23 through the end of 2006.
| Age | W | L | RA | ERA | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | HR+ | BB+ | K+ |
| 23+ | 2090 | 1379 | 3.79 | 3.45 | 4974 | 30660.2 | 28383 | 12921 | 11758 | 2677 | 9104 | 23953 | 131 | 140 | 136 | 116 |
The point is, some pretty good pitchers have struggled in the majors before making the adjustments necessary to cope with big league batters. In other words, Phil Hughes wouldn't be the first pitcher to have a rough time when he first got to the majors and then improve.
That aside, I will admit that I was hoping to see better fastball velocity from Hughes, but given the injuries and missed time this season I'm willing to be patient. I'm also concerned that he doesn't seem to be the ground ball machine that he was in the minors to this point, although I have no idea how GB% translates from the majors to the minors. Hughes gave up six HRs in 275 minor league innings, and gave up 3 HRs in just six innings today, although Granderson's shouldn't really be considered a HR.
Hughes has a respectable FIP and xFIP of 4.18 and 4.28 respectively. He has struck out 22.5% of the hitters he has faced in the majors, compared to the AL starter average of 16.8%. One problem he's had is a higher than average walk rate, walking 9.4% of the batters he's faced compared to the AL average starter's 8.4%. His HR rate is also a touch above average thanks to today's game, at 3.1% compared to 2.6%. This matches up pretty nicely with the two tables above, which show that this selected group of pitchers all improved their HR rate and BB rate over time.
All in all, Hughes's peripherals indicate that he's not necessarily pitched as badly as you'd think if you looked at just his ERA of 5.35. That's probably at least partially a function of the big innings that Hughes has fallen victim to so far, which I think are innings where he's had to adjust to what wasn't working and part of the learning process.
Hughes is certainly not a sure thing, no pitching prospect is, but if he turns out to be a disappointment then every single scout that raved about him and every single stat he put up in the minors will have turned out to be wrong. I guess this is all a really long way of answering the question in the title. No, we should not be worried about Phil Hughes.
As for the rest of the team, I'm not particularly worried either. This has been a rough road trip, but I didn't expect it to be a good one. I'll just hope against hope that Mike Mussina can pitch serviceably well and the Yankees can steal tomorrow's game and head home for Boston on an up note.
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