Hallelujah!!! Someone in Yankeeworld heard my plea! Phil Hughes at the Stadium Thursday night against Toronto.

Joel, understood.

I just don’t see Hughes being called up in April with less than 20 AAA innings under his belt.

All-Star break may be the time to call him up. If he’s performing and healthy, then that may be his time.

Given Hughes injury issues, it’s not suprising the Yanks are being careful with him.

Don–Don’t get me wrong. I agree that the Yanks need to back to Sox hitters off the plate. I was not asking for Hughes to exclusively be that guy. All that I’m saying is that you go with your best and stop messing around with AA guys who are not your best.

Anyone who thinks Clippard is a big time propsect has no clue. At best, he’s a back of the rotation guy in the AL. Further, my post was in response to the nonsense of bringing him up to pitch in Boston.

As for Hughes, why pick himto ‘dust’ some Bosox batter? No one on the team dares do that. Hit two of the Yankees, four straight HR’s? Big deal say the vets on the team. This has gone on way too long but Torre is to blame for this, clearly this is on Torre. But to want a raw rookie to do it is absurd.

I don’t buy this “baby-your-best-young-talent” stuff. You don’t send AA guys to Fenway Park to get bombed. Period. This is Major League Baseball, national TV, prime-time, against the Red Sox. That was a freakin’ embarassment to the New York Yankees last night. I don’t care how you guys want to spin this.

The Cubs could have protected Wood and Prior until they were 25, and both guys still would have been injury-prone. Your either a horse or you’re not a horse. Whitey Ford was 20 years old in 1950 and helped the Yankees win a pennant, and he went on to pitch forever.

They treat these pitchers like china dolls. Hughes is 6’5″ 240 and throws 95 mph. You give him the ball and say “up and in to Papi and nothing around the plate to Manny. Good luck, kid.”

~~~I’m somewhat serious… Phelps didn’t look that bad there…~~~

But, I don’t think he could reach 2B on a throw…

Agree about a starter needing to take one for the team. I am not too bummed about the three losses. One was due to a typical Mo April meltdown, the others due to starting rookies because the big guns are on the DL. (gosh, just how sweet it would have been to have the Worm Killer out pitch Dice-K last night.)

Given the injuries to Prior, Wood, Liriano and now Felix Hernandez, I think the organization is taking the right approach with Hughes. I would much rather see him have a 20 year career than a 2 year and cooked.

Definitely don’t want to hit the panic button as much as Friday night was painful and avoidable.
The cumulative difference between six and seven inning starts is immense. This bullpen, Proctor in particular, will not otherwise survive the season . Torre must make personal gut checks every night and avoid his predictable habit of going to the pen for the 7th. The occassional loss is worth it over the long hall.
Melkey looks pathetic. The bottom three of the lineup is dead weight. Two lefties in Tampa will not be easy. Good news..DiceK looked quite human.

Some thoughts:

- Johnny… where was you?
- Abreu didn’t look too good for the majority of this Series. He did work some important walks but he K’d quite a bit as well.
- Should we be worrying about Mo? Just a little bit?
- The Sox Top 3 aren’t very intimidating. If we had Wang, Moose or maybe even Pavano in games 2 and 3 we’d probably have won.
- Matsuzaka doesn’t impress me. I live in Boston and get NESN so I’ve watched all his starts. He has been less and less impressive with each passing outing. He seems to get rattled when runners get on. And like Steve said, Nieves (and even Doug M!) scorched some balls off of him.