While pitching great, Yanks need to manage innings for Phil 
BRONX – It would be so easy to say, “Let him go”.
That would be the tempting thing to do when you consider the performance of Phil Hughes this season.
You see the presence that he has on the mound and you marvel, as if he were a ten-year veteran.
Hitters swing and miss at his fastball, hit weak groundballs when they swing at his cutter, find themselves fooled when he occasionally breaks out his changeup and stand at the plate frozen when he unleashes his 12-to-6 curveball.
There are no histrionics or overwhelming signs of emotion. Hughes is just a pitcher going out start after start doing his job with a businesslike approach.
With an American League leading 10 wins against only one defeat, Hughes has exceeded the expectations of everyone and the projections that anyone could have had for him before the year began.
Being among the best when you consider the DH and pitching in the AL East put him on a different level than several of the National League pitchers pitching to astounding low earned run averages.
He is an elite starter who just happens to be pitching in the backend of the rotation. He is halfway to 20 wins and with a little luck, he will have a great chance to win the CY Young award.
All of this presents a serious problem.
The old “innings” cap.
Yes, the innings limit. The same innings limit the Yankees had on Joba Chamberlain last year (famously known as “The Joba Rules” now shifts to Hughes and it will be up to the organization to figure out a way to best deploy this strategy.
Unlike last year when Chamberlain was inconsistent for a majority of the year, Hughes has arguably been, if not in the top-5, then one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball. With the strong starts he has consistently had, no team would want to remove him from the rotation if they did not have to.
The Yankees though have a small luxury now, because outside of the current struggles of AJ Burnett, they have a rotation of guys performing tremendously. Very few teams can say they have four quality starters all pitching well at the same time. This is what they have now since Javier Vazquez began to pitch well from the beginning of May.
While the Yankees have yet to release the exact number of innings Hughes will pitch this season, the overwhelming belief is that he will pitch no more than 180. At 82 innings after 13 starts (an average of over 6 1/3 innings per start), he is nearing the halfway point.
With minimal off days in the second half of the season, the times to work around these parameters will become more difficult.
Just by coincidence, the Yankees have an off day coming in between their road trip Thursday before they go to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Friday and another off day Monday when they fly back to New York. The other two times they may have is the weekend before the All Star Game and holding him back until the fifth game after the break.
It is incumbent on the Yankees to make sure they preserve him in order to pitch at least 20 innings in October to secure a 28th world title. If you had to align your postseason rotation, you would start with CC Sabathia, and the next two pitchers you can flip-flop between Hughes and Andy Pettitte.
BRONX – It would be so easy to say, “Let him go”.
That would be the tempting thing to do when you consider the performance of Phil Hughes this season.
You see the presence that he has on the mound and you marvel, as if he were a ten-year veteran.
Hitters swing and miss at his fastball, hit weak groundballs when they swing at his cutter, find themselves fooled when he occasionally breaks out his changeup and stand at the plate frozen when he unleashes his 12-to-6 curveball.
There are no histrionics or overwhelming signs of emotion. Hughes is just a pitcher going out start after start doing his job with a businesslike approach.
With an American League leading 10 wins against only one defeat, Hughes has exceeded the expectations of everyone and the projections that anyone could have had for him before the year began.
Being among the best when you consider the DH and pitching in the AL East put him on a different level than several of the National League pitchers pitching to astounding low earned run averages.
He is an elite starter who just happens to be pitching in the backend of the rotation. He is halfway to 20 wins and with a little luck, he will have a great chance to win the CY Young award.
All of this presents a serious problem.
The old “innings” cap.
Yes, the innings limit. The same innings limit the Yankees had on Joba Chamberlain last year (famously known as “The Joba Rules” now shifts to Hughes and it will be up to the organization to figure out a way to best deploy this strategy.
Unlike last year when Chamberlain was inconsistent for a majority of the year, Hughes has arguably been, if not in the top-5, then one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball. With the strong starts he has consistently had, no team would want to remove him from the rotation if they did not have to.
The Yankees though have a small luxury now, because outside of the current struggles of AJ Burnett, they have a rotation of guys performing tremendously. Very few teams can say they have four quality starters all pitching well at the same time. This is what they have now since Javier Vazquez began to pitch well from the beginning of May.
While the Yankees have yet to release the exact number of innings Hughes will pitch this season, the overwhelming belief is that he will pitch no more than 180. At 82 innings after 13 starts (an average of over 6 1/3 innings per start), he is nearing the halfway point.
With minimal off days in the second half of the season, the times to work around these parameters will become more difficult.
Just by coincidence, the Yankees have an off day coming in between their road trip Thursday before they go to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Friday and another off day Monday when they fly back to New York. The other two times they may have is the weekend before the All Star Game and holding him back until the fifth game after the break.
It is incumbent on the Yankees to make sure they preserve him in order to pitch at least 20 innings in October to secure a 28th world title. If you had to align your postseason rotation, you would start with CC Sabathia, and the next two pitchers you can flip-flop between Hughes and Andy Pettitte.
This is nothing against AJ Burnett, who pitched well in the postseason last year or Vazquez, who has also found himself. However, would you trust either one of them in playoff game either home or away in October?
Putting both of them in the playoff rotation and sending Hughes to the bullpen would be a catastrophic mistake.
It has been a long road back for Hughes. He won the fifth starter role out of spring training and the team just looked for him to stabilize the spot and not have a blowup reminiscent of 2008 when he did not win a game, encountered immense control problems, and eventually found himself out of the rotation.
While dominating the second half of last year pitching the eighth inning in the championship season, he learned to pitch with a lead and learned how to be aggressive and trust his stuff. A mentality touted of him coming up in the minors that he had lost, but now regained it.
Now that he has it, and is showing the rest of the league, it is now up to the Yankees to reel it in somewhat for not only Hughes’ long-term future, but for their own sake. Finding pitchers to give you elite performance and minimal cost is very rare and of incredible value to a team.
The Yankees know this.
Hughes will always be ready to take the ball. He is a bulldog and that is his mentality.
However, the Yankees need to look at the future, not just for today.
Putting both of them in the playoff rotation and sending Hughes to the bullpen would be a catastrophic mistake.
It has been a long road back for Hughes. He won the fifth starter role out of spring training and the team just looked for him to stabilize the spot and not have a blowup reminiscent of 2008 when he did not win a game, encountered immense control problems, and eventually found himself out of the rotation.
While dominating the second half of last year pitching the eighth inning in the championship season, he learned to pitch with a lead and learned how to be aggressive and trust his stuff. A mentality touted of him coming up in the minors that he had lost, but now regained it.
Now that he has it, and is showing the rest of the league, it is now up to the Yankees to reel it in somewhat for not only Hughes’ long-term future, but for their own sake. Finding pitchers to give you elite performance and minimal cost is very rare and of incredible value to a team.
The Yankees know this.
Hughes will always be ready to take the ball. He is a bulldog and that is his mentality.
However, the Yankees need to look at the future, not just for today.
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