Actually, do a search of WW and you’ll see that I’ve called Hughes a hero when he pitched well for the Yankees.

That’s the thing with Hughes. There’s always an excuse when he doesn’t pitch well, right?
————
Seeing as some come up with excuses when he does pitch well, I guess it’s only fair

Raf, the actual criteria is HS pitchers selected in the first round that first appeared in a MLB game for the team that drafted them.
———–
I believe the pitchers listed fit the criteria.

FYI, this just in from the President of the Phil Hughes Apologists Association…

http://tinyurl.com/6q27lo

~~~[Phil] had a rough outing for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Sunday night, allowing five runs on eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. But it might not have hurt his stock, as Cashman said Hughes had “a bug.”

“He was feeling under the weather,” Cashman said, adding, “it explains a lot of things.”~~~

That’s the thing with Hughes. There’s always an excuse when he doesn’t pitch well, right?

Raf, the actual criteria is HS pitchers selected in the first round that first appeared in a MLB game for the team that drafted them. There may be a good number of HS pitcher 1st rounders who got to the bigs after getting traded as a minor leaguer to another organization. HS pitcher Scott McGregor was a 1st Round pick for the Yankees (1972) who went on to become a 20 game winner—for the Baltimore Orioles. That’s not the point. You don’t spend a 1st round pick on a HS pitcher thinking that in a few years you can include him in a deal for aging mediocrity like Ken Holtzman. You make the pick thinking that he’ll be a franchise fixture for years to come. And that, I believe, is naive at best.

Have other HS pitchers taken in the first round panned out?
————-
Using the criteria stated above (they’ve gone on to appear in a ML game), we have

2006: Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers
2005: Ryan Tucker, Marlins
2004: Homer Bailey, Reds, some guy named Phil Hughes
2003: John Danks, Rangers, Chad Billingsley, Dodgers

That’s all I’ve got for now… Check thebaseballcube.com for others.

To date I can think of only two (2) HS pitchers that were selected in the first round of the annual June Amateur Draft by the Yankees that have gone on to appear in a major league game for the Bombers. One is Phil Hughes(2004). Who is the other? The answer will tell you all you need to know about wasting your 1st round pick on HS pitchers.
—————————————–
Have other HS pitchers taken in the first round panned out? That’s the better question. I don’t think it’s inherenly because the Yankees draft them that they might fail.

To date I can think of only two (2) HS pitchers that were selected in the first round of the annual June Amateur Draft by the Yankees that have gone on to appear in a major league game for the Bombers. One is Phil Hughes(2004). Who is the other? The answer will tell you all you need to know about wasting your 1st round pick on HS pitchers.

Here’s one for the fans of Phil:

http://tinyurl.com/5qu2sr

FYI.

Ken – don’t ever judge things based on perceptions, things you’re “certain” are true without any research to back it up. That’s where you get into trouble.

As for this piece, most of those guys were not dynamos from the start. Steve even closes that post saying: “This study suggests, to me, that, come 2010, the second season of the new Yankee Stadium, if Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy are not effective major league pitchers, there’s a good chance that they may never be star pitchers in the bigs.”

This is a fair assessment. According to that post it’s basically 50/50 between being above average from the start and taking anywhere from 1 to 3 seasons to figure things out. It is currently late 2008, far from the 2010 season mentioned above. Phil Hughes has not yet thrown 100 major league innings yet.

It is not enough to preach patience when assessing young pitchers. You have to actually practice it too.