And threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Am I overreactting? Of course I am. It’s what I do! Well, one of the things I do. But in any case, the reason this specifically bothers me is that Phil Hughes really needs to get back to starting very soon if he is going to hit the innings cap he’s got for this year. And hitting that innings cap is a part of being a “starter long term”.

I mean, not even long term. They’re going to need him next year able to plug in 180-200 innings because there is no way the team brings back Andy Pettitte. In fact, part of bringing back Pettitte was about letting the kid get a full year of professional baseball hopefully unhurt in so that he could jump in to the 2010 rotation.

You may say, “Well has nothing to prove at AAA!” That may be true but it’s short sighted and ignores some important stuff. Such as his splits against LHB and RHB. If you haven’t seen them before, remember that I am here to help:

Split    G   PA   AB   R    H   HR  BB  SO   SO/BB  BA     OBP    SLG    OPS 
vs RHB   14  105  94   11   20  4   8   26   3.25   0.213  0.286  0.415  0.701
vs LHB   13  97   81   10   22  3   10  20   2      0.272  0.361  0.481  0.842

These are for this year only, but they are similar for his brief MLB career. Lefties see him much better than righties, who don’t see him that well at all. This is part of why he did so well against the RHB heavy Texas Rangers lineup.

The team was–allgedly–having him work on a changeup so that LHB wouldn’t just sit on his curveball and fastball. Plus, a decent changeup is always handy to have. Since he came up, it’s been almost non-existent. Afterall, it’s pretty dangerous to test out a not finished product in Major League games. So, not only could he be getting his innings in at SWB instead of pitching out of the bullpen here or there but he could be working on making himself a better pitcher.

I’m sure that Hughes will find himself starting again at some point. The other kid starter on the team (who is older than Hughes, actually) does have an innings cap as well. But as the season passes on, I begin to worry.

And so I’m not a total negative nancy:

Keeping Hughes in the bullpen for the time being does (hopefully) stop the team from doing something rash like acquiring Huston Street for too much right now. A lot of the potential trade chips the Yankees have are hurt, dead or underperforming and I don’t think a relief pitcher is worth Zach MacAllister’s 2009 performance to date.

And depending on what Hughes’ innings total is at the end of the MLB season, they can ship him off to pitch in the Winter Leagues and make up some of that as well. The options they have here are not as large as last year since he cannot go somewhere like Hawaii, but he can spend a few months in Puerto Rico and log some innings there.

In any case, this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth because for the next fifteen years we’ll have to not only hear JOBA SHOULD BE IN THE BULLPEN but also PHIL HUGHES SHOULD BE IN THE BULLPEN and I have enough headaches as is.

Andy Pettitte needs a rest – This one is pretty obvious. In his last few starts, it’s pretty clear that something is wrong with Andy. Probably that he’s old (wild guess). He has an incentives based contract, so no he isn’t going to volunteer to have some starts skipped so he can rest his back. It’s the job of the team, however, to tell him he needs to skip a couple of starts. Who better than to slip in for a few weeks than Hughes? After that, though, he can go back to the land of his favorite TV show and bump Casey Fossum or Josh Towers out of the rotation (or not, but I don’t care where they go as long as it’s not the New York Yankees).

The Yankees want to give me an aneurysm – Because having to listen to the B-Jobbers talk about Joba needing to be in the bullpen wasn’t, it’s already started since Phil Hughes looked good last night in that one inning. Guess what? Any potentially above average starting pitcher should look that good–they’re supposed to have the stuff to get through the opposing lineup three times so once shouldn’t be a problem (of course, sometimes it is but that is not my point). I must have whined too much during the relocation process and this is their revenge.

The mainstream media needs something to talk about - I am okay with people whining that Hughes should stay in the bullpen this year and not hit his innings cap, thereby delaying his progress as a starter if it keeps Wallace Matthews from pounding out insane columns about how Alex Rodriguez makes the Yankees lose simply by breathing.

He is very close to his innings cap – Luckily for us as Yankees fans, he isn’t going to hit that in June! This is the only actual circumstance I am okay with Hughes lingering around in the MLB bullpen for an extended period. If he is near his cap towards the end of the year, I will also be ridiculously ecstatic and you will probably hear me crying tears of joy over Hughes’ first healthy year in professional baseball.