Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 23, 2007
Philip the Tank

It's about time:

A day after getting swept by the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees said Monday they plan on having top pitching prospect Phil Hughes make his major league debut Thursday against Toronto.

Yankees manager Joe Torre didn't rule out that the 20-year-old right-hander, taken in the first round of the 2004 amateur draft, might make more than one start.

"If we're comfortable and we sense he's comfortable, we'll see what we do," Torre said before the Yankees played Tampa Bay.

Hughes is 2-1 with a 3.94 ERA in three starts this season at Triple-A Scranton, and he pitched six shutout innings last Wednesday at Syracuse, allowing two hits, striking out 10 and walking none.

After last night's game, the Yankees could certainly use Hughes' control. With luck, he'll have a year like Jered Weaver did in 2006.


Posted by David Pinto at 06:35 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

...and then go down the next year with arm problems?

Posted by: the other josh at April 23, 2007 06:42 PM

The guy is a professional pitcher who is going to start a game somewhere between now and Thursday. Is there something about pitching in the major leagues that makes him more likely to get arm problems? Humberto Sanchez managed to injure himself into Tommy John surgery despite not getting the big league call.

Posted by: michael tedesco at April 23, 2007 09:10 PM

Depends if the Yankees expect him to throw 200+ innings or if they shut him down after around 160 or so, which may be difficult to do if that mark comes around the end of August and the Yankees are fighting for post-season contention. Hughes is a great prospect, but people often forget that he does have a fairly recent injury history. The Yanks are in fairly dire need of Hughes' services right now, though, so I can't argue with the call-up.

Posted by: Ben at April 23, 2007 09:33 PM

I think they will keep him at 160 innings total. But, given who he is replacing he is likely to be able to throw these innings for the Yankees AND reduce the innings load on the rest of relief staff. For example, if he starts 25 games at 6 innings per that is only 150 innings. And those are likely higher quality innings than we will get out of Igawa/Wright/Karstens/long reliever tbd.

Posted by: michael tedesco at April 23, 2007 09:39 PM

I see I'm not the only one who finds this move concerning. I'm getting pretty tired of seeing pitching prospects rushed to the majors (20 yrs old??) and getting hurt. I live in Tacoma, so I get to see the Mariners do this all the time. (In case anyone's missed it, Felix Hernandez is now on the DL.)

Posted by: beckya57 at April 23, 2007 10:28 PM
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