Progress! Progress is very important, especially when you are a young glasses wearing pitcher for the Yankees who had some major problems with being bad at the start of the year. Phil Hughes was pretty not awful, but there are a few things I was concerned with specifically:
- Not using his curve to get batters out. Relying solely on the fastball and cutter meant that the batters could foul off tons of pitches, even if they couldn’t make good contact. He only threw 10 curveballs out of 90 pitches, and only a few changeups (not for strikes because it’s not really a ready pitch yet).
- Why did his velocity drop a few MPH in the 3rd inning? He went from ~92-94 to ~90-92, and I’m not sure why and I don’t have enough information about his minor league starts to know if this happened there. Was he pulling a Papelbon? Was he just throwing softer on purpose? I don’t know!
- Good control but doesn’t hit the glove. Lots of glove moving on Pudge’s part, not sure if this is something he can improve on or if it’s just one of those things you wind up dealing with. Not everyone is Mariano or Greg Maddux I guess.
But anyway, I told my companions at the game that I was hoping for four not bad innings and that is what I got so hopefully this is a step he can build on. It was far better than what he was showing in the beginning of the year. So, a tentative yay. I guess those glasses do help him see at night!
Little tip– Relying on the gun on YES is not a good idea if you’re looking for accuracy. Also, remember in general that you’re going to lose some bite on the fastball as you get deeper into games
I was actually at the game (doing a marathon this week), it was the stadium gun. The YES gun is generally 2 MPH or so below the actual speed, once it even said Mariano was throwing under 90. Losing 4MPH is a little concerning, but he was still hitting ~92.