Phil Hughes, Phenom

The Yankees have played nineteen game and lost eleven of them. The starting pitching has been downright awful outside of Andy Pettitte, sporting a rather unattractive 5.65 ERA, and that's including Andy Pettitte's numbers. That 5.65 ERA is good for 11th best in the American League, behind only Texas, Seattle and Tampa Bay. It's also the 26th best ERA in baseball behind the three aforementioned teams and Florida. The Yankees starters have combined to throw 94.1 innings in 19 games. In layman's terms, that less than 5 innings per start. So Yankee starters aren't even qualifying for wins!

Andy Pettitte, Carl Pavano (DL), Mike Mussina (DL), Jeff Karstens (DL), Kei Igawa, Darrell Rasner, Chase Wright (optioned to AA), and recently Chien-Ming Wang have made starts for the Yankees this year. Four have been disable and everyone else has been ineffective, outside Pettitte. So the Yankees felt it was time to call up uber-prospect Philip Hughes to start tonight against a top 5 Blue Jays offense. He's had very impressive Minor League numbers in two full seasons, but struggled mightily with command and location in spring training. He was 23-8 with a 2.24 ERA in 48 minor league starts. He struck out more than 10 batters per nine and posted a sick 0.86 WHIP in 253 career minor league innings.

Here's my take: it's too early. Hughes averaged 5 innings per start in the minor leagues and I can't imagine him being allowed to toss a complete game in his major league debut. We've already established that the Yankee starters go about 5 innings a game, and that'll probably be how long Hughes goes (given he doesn't throw 80 pitches in three innings). The Yankees planned on limiting his innings this year, trying to build up his arm strength for future 162-game major league seasons. His numbers in the minors don't matter. He can work on developing his curveball and focusing on finessing his location and command of his secondary pitches. In the Majors, especially for a struggling Yankees team, his performance does matter. He'll be asked to give the team a chance to win. Even with his impressive K/9 (10.2) and K/BB (4.9) numbers, Hughes' command is still raw and unreliable. I thought he needed one more full season at Scranton before calling him up again, but the Yankees' current pitching situation made the Yankees believe otherwise.

The Yankees have one of the deepest farm systems, regarding pitching in baseball. There are other starters within the organization that are more polished and MLB game ready than Hughes. Tyler Clippard, Steven Jackson and Ross Ohlendorf probably would do as well as Hughes will tonight, without compromising Hughes' future.