The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

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. [...]

Phil Hughes - 8IP, 4H (all singles), 0R, 0ER, 0BB, 11K
He’s going to the Arizona Fall League to get his innings up since he missed so much of the year. Hopefully the injury magic does not repeat itself in 2008.

Carl Pavano - Trenton Thunder- 6IP, 6H, 1R, 1ER, 1BB, 6K
Pavano might actually make an appearance with the Yankees this year if things keep going the way they are. It depends on how badly they need a starter and whether his arm is ready or not, of course.
Phil Hughes - Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees - 3.2IP, [...]

I’m mildly freaking out here after yesterday’s game and some bad news for the lineup.
Phil Hughes’ fastball was still way below where it should be, and his command was off. He wasn’t hitting where he wanted because of the movement but now that it’s start #2 I am starting to get concerned about him. There [...]

Now that we’ve seen the entire rotation at least once (Wang twice now), here are some observations:
Chien-Ming Wang - Looked very solid twice now, against teams with differing levels of offense. If he continues to be able to use his slider and changeup the way he did in his first two starts he’ll do well [...]

Phil Hughes picked up where he left off his last outing. Rain will not keep him down.

Hughes 4.0 0 0 0 2 1 0

Those two walks were both in the fourth inning and were both four pitch walks, when Hughes seemed a little tired. Girardi left him in to get out of the jam, and he did it. I was impressed [...]

It seems that in Yankee land you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t in regards to spending money. If you spend too much people cry that you spend too much and if you are concerned about your payroll hitting $300million you are a terrible person who doesn’t want to spend!
The backpage [...]

So the Alex Rodriguez sweepstakes wound up not being so exciting, and the Miguel Cabrera sweepstakes do not involve the Yankees and I don’t care about them. This leaves the very exciting Johan Santana sweepstakes for me to care deeply about.
The latest reports are that the Yankees have offered up Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera [...]