Yankees, Short of Pitchers, Turn to a Prized Prospect
By TYLER KEPNER
Published: April 24, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., April 23 — The Yankees did not plan it this way. But
then, they did not expect to lose so many starting pitchers to injuries,
either. So Phil Hughes, the 20-year-old right-hander who may be the best
pitching prospect in all of minor league baseball, will make his Yankees
debut on Thursday.
“My exact goal, and I talked openly about it, was that hopefully we’d be
able to keep him down all year,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “But
reality kicks in when you play a season. We have a team need and we need a
starter. Right now, we’re thinking about one start.”
Hughes would be the youngest pitcher to start for the Yankees since
18-year-old Jose Rijo in 1984, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
The Yankees could have left Chase Wright in the rotation to face the Boston
Red Sox again on Friday. But Wright allowed homers to four batters in a row
Sunday night, and the Yankees returned him to Class AA Trenton on Monday.
The principal owner George Steinbrenner was displeased that the Yankees were
swept in Boston, and he told that to Manager Joe Torre when Torre called him
on Monday.
“Obviously, he wasn’t happy about the weekend,” Torre said. “But that was
the extent of it.”
If Steinbrenner was behind Hughes’s promotion, Cashman and Torre did not
say. Torre spoke with Cashman on Sunday about the need for a new starter, and
Cashman said he consulted Monday with Dave Miley, the manager at Class AAA
Scranton-Wilkes Barre; Dave Eiland, the Class AAA pitching coach; Nardi
Contreras, the minor league pitching coordinator; and Mark Newman, the senior
vice president for baseball operations.
“Right now, he’s the best pitcher at triple A,” Cashman said. “That’s
the bottom line.”
Hughes was scheduled to start here on Tuesday, but the Yankees decided to
back him up two days to face Toronto at Yankee Stadium. Jeff Karstens will
start the series opener against Boston on Friday, when Mike Mussina will test
his strained left hamstring in a start for Class AA Trenton.
If Mussina comes through that start healthy, Cashman and Manager Joe Torre
said, his next start would be in Texas against the Rangers on May 3. In
theory, that would bump Hughes out of the rotation, because Cashman said
Karstens was still ahead of him on the depth chart.
But Torre did not dismiss the idea that Hughes could stay longer. Carl
Pavano, another starter, is on the disabled list with a forearm strain and
has not been cleared to throw off a mound.
“I think we have to be realistic; we have people up here,” Torre said. “
But he’s up here and he’s going to pitch Thursday, and if we’re
comfortable and we see that he’s comfortable, we’ll see what we do.
Especially with Pavano down at this point in time, if we think it’s the
right thing for him — and, of course, for us — we’re certainly going to
look at it.”
The Yankees badly need innings from their starters. According to Elias,
Yankees starters had averaged 4.9 innings per outing through Sunday, ranking
last in the major leagues.
They are not likely to receive a lengthy outing from Hughes. The Yankees have
tried to be careful with Hughes’s workload, restricting his innings in the
second half last season. Hughes has pitched only 253 1/3 innings in the
minors, including a career-high 146 last season.
Cashman said Torre would not be asked to restrict Hughes’s innings, but he
added that Torre was “not going to stretch him out.” Torre said he would
see how hard Hughes has to compete to determine how long he pitches.
“A lot of it is going to depend on how comfortable he is to watch,” Torre
said. “Is he going to get in trouble every inning? I think sometimes pitch
counts don’t tell you the whole story. You may wear yourself out after 70 or
80 if you have to deal with pressure every inning.”
Hughes had one good start and one bad start for Scranton this season before
firing six scoreless innings last Wednesday at Syracuse, allowing two hits
and striking out 10. Hughes told reporters that he threw 14 changeups, the
most he had ever thrown in a game, rounding out his fastball/curveball
repertory.
“Everybody has been clamoring for him since last year, as far as fans and
the media anyway,” Eiland told the Scranton Times-Tribune on Monday. “If he
pitches the way he pitched the last time in Syracuse, he’s not going to have
any problems.”
Hughes was the Yankees’ No. 1 draft pick in 2004 and went 12-6 with a 2.16
earned run average between Class A Tampa and Class AA Trenton last season. He
entered this season ranked by Baseball America as the top pitching prospect
in the minors, and he is 2-1 with a 3.94 E.R.A. at Scranton, with 17
strikeouts and four walks in 16 innings.
“There’s certainly a lot of hype,” Cashman said. “I’m more looking
forward to having him and everyone else help us through a difficult time. I’
ll probably be more excited when we get our full complement of guys back.”
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