FLUSHING – The clock began to tick on Phil Hughes in the sixth inning.
Two men were out and Angel Pagan was on third base for the Mets leading 3-1 in a game that was more than in reach for a Yankees comeback despite their offensive futility against starter Mike Pelfrey.
For the young Yankee right-hander, the season began with him almost toying with the rest of the league. As late as his last start on Monday against the Red Sox he stood at 5-0 with an ERA of 1.38.
However, it was in that start when Hughes showed some chinks in his previously invincible armor.
Given a five run cushion after one-inning, he allowed Boston to work a number of tough at-bats before finally reaching base.
Finally, by the fifth inning, he got two outs on three pitches and with a 5-2 lead, was well on his way to another victory. Instead, he gave up the lead on a single, double and homerun to trim the margin to 6-5, raise his pitch count over 100 and effectively ending his night.
The last thing a pitcher needs to do to make the jump to elite greatness is to have the ability to minimize damage and not allow a team to harm you by scoring runs with two outs.
Allowing the other team to extend an inning begins a cycle of events that all lead to an eventual bad result.
It forces the pitcher to throw more pitches, the equivalent of taking away bullets from a gun. The more you throw in these spots, the less likely you will be pitching later in a game. In addition, the two-out, run-scoring hit is the most back-breaking for a team knowing all they needed was one more out before going back into the dugout.
Saturday at Citi Field, Hughes started strong in the first inning by getting the first two hitters. Then a double by Jason Bay and walk to rookie Ike Davis gave the Mets a chance. David Wright and Angel Pagan would make him pay with back-to-back run-scoring singles to give the Mets a 2-0 lead.
For Hughes, it was an inning that could have seen him throw 11 pitches (before Bay’s double) to get three outs and instead, saw him throw 25.
Fast forward two innings and again, Hughes retires Jose Reyes and Luis Castillo for the first two outs. Having Bay down in the count 1-2, he gives up a single to keep the inning going.
Another walk to Davis followed and with Wright up again, he came through again with another two-out run-scoring hit to make it 3-0 turning what could have been another potential 11 pitch inning (before the Bay single) into a 21-pitch affair, leaving him with close to 60 pitches to get the game’s first nine outs.
In the sixth, Hughes pitch count stood at 91, but the score was manageable only down two. The Yankees had just scraped to get a run off Mike Pelfrey in the previous inning and holding them scoreless would give the team momentum.
Angel Pagan worked a nine-pitch at-bat for a double. Then Hughes got Rod Barajas to groundout and Jeff Francoeur to strike out, leaving him needing to get one more out to leave the game with a quality start.
A low pitch count inning could have brought him back for the seventh if it was not for Pagan winning that long battle. Now it was on him to empty the tank.
Alex Cora would pinch hit for Pelfrey and Hughes quickly jumped ahead 0-2. A ball and two fouls extended the count and then the light hitting second baseman grounded a single to right to score Pagan and give the Mets a three-run margin again.
It was pitch number 117 on the night and would be his last. Joe Girardi came to the mound and took the ball from his starter. Hughes threw an astounding 75 percent of his pitches for strikes (88-for-117), but many of them were hittable strikes.
What could have been a strong seven or eight inning outing shrank to only 5 2/3 grinding innings and his highest pitch count total of the year.
In the end, it was his first loss of the season. More than that, it was a learning experience. Knowing that when has a team down in an inning, he cannot let them up and give them extra life.
Consider it just another step in his maturation progress.
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