Jim Palmer Likes The Young Yankees Arms

From Peter Abraham:

"I like both of their arms," Palmer said. "I know people in New York are upset because they haven't pitched well so far. But you can't have it all. You can't be young and experienced. It's 162 games. You have to give these guys a chance to mature as pitchers and as people."

Palmer offered a breakdown of the two pitchers:

Hughes: "His fastball is his best pitch. He has a pretty good curveball, a good changeup and good command when he's pitching. I watched him pitch against Baltimore (last weekend), and he pitched well. He seems to have one bad inning sometimes, but he'll learn to avoid that."

Kennedy: "He just doesn't know how good he is. I read a quote in the paper where he said he has proven he can pitch in the majors. Well, he hasn't proven anything yet. He's going to have to be more aggressive. He needs to be more aggressive early in the count. You want to respect the hitters, but you don't want to over-respect them where you feel you have to be perfect."

Jim Palmer knows pitching. You don't go 268-152 (20 wins 8 times) with a 2.86 ERA unless you know a thing or two about pitching.

I agree with everything he's saying here.

I don't remember hearing Kennedy says he's "proven he can pitch to major leaguers" but that wasn't a wise thing for a 23 year old with three starts under his belt to be say. Palmer is right; he hasn't proving anything at this level yet. At least Hughes had 15 starts and a playoff victory last season, Kennedy had just three starts, although they were excellent, it's still just three starts.

He also said that when the Yankees offense starts to score more runs, Hughes and Kennedy will relax and challenge hitters.

"If you can get them four runs, they'll relax and learn how to pitch. You know that's going to happen, their offense is too good. I don't put too much in what has happened so far this season."

This was one of the same issues that plagued the entire pitching staff for much of the early part of last season. They'd always be pitching down a few runs or in a tie game, and they ended up trying to be too fine and couldn't relax on the mound. Every pitch seemed like it would make or break the game, and this is probably adversely effecting Kennedy and Hughes (and other guys) this year.