Yankees pitcher Phil Hughes is viewed as a future starter. No matter the results this season out of the bullpen -- so far the 23-year-old has been dominant -- general manager Brian Cashman insists there is no temptation to keep Hughes as a reliever.
"None," Cashman said recently. "Zero."
Yet, when he is again a starter, Hughes will need to keep refining what is still a raw changeup, one he will eventually need to throw well enough to navigate lineups stacked with left-handed hitters. But despite this need, it's a pitch Hughes has eradicated from his repertoire as a reliever, meaning he is losing valuable time toward its development.
It is an example of long-term sacrifice to fill an immediate need, a trade the Yankees are willing to make to fix a bullpen that had been ailing.
Hughes admits efforts to improve his changeup are "on the back burner.""He's going to find a way to develop that changeup," said Mark Newman, the Yankees' vice president of baseball operations. "But I'll tell you what he's getting: major-league game experience in tough situations, under duress, against the best competition on the planet. As he does this, he gains confidence, and that is huge."
"The goal is to win a championship," Hughes said. "My personal goal of being a successful starter down the road is just personal. I feel like we've got a team right now that's capable of winning a World Series."
But there is a price to pay for reshuffling the Yankees bullpen.
Though Cashman and others stop short of calling it a must-have pitch -- A.J. Burnett and Roy Halladay are among some of the league's pitchers who have enjoyed success without throwing many changeups -- they say an effective change would round out Hughes' repertoire as a starter.
"It's certainly a weapon that I will need," he said.
When the season is complete, Newman said the Yankees will have choices about how to proceed with developing the pitch.It remains to be seen if there will be any long lasting side effects to ditching the pitch now. But like Newman says, there is plenty of time to work on the pitch in the offseason, spring training, side sessions, etc., and I can't disagree with him on that.
"There's doing it postseason in some kind of workout environment," Newman said. "There is the winter ball option. There is an early spring-training option. ... There's several ways to do it."
Hughes said he's not worried about picking up the pitch again once the season is over. But until then, Hughes said his focus remains on the short-term, which in this case is shoring up the Yankees bullpen.
"Being in the bullpen and helping us win now is priority No. 1," he said. "Everything falls in after that."
That said I definitely believe it's a pitch he's going to need to have if he's going to be a top of the rotation starter in this league.
What do you guys think?
2 Comments:
Hughes is not AJ Burnett. Burnett has a changeup but doesnt use it much because he doesn't need it. Burnett has the best curveball in baseball, he can throw it for a strike or in the dirt for a swing and miss and his fastball is 94-97 with a ton of movement.
Hughes I think needs to devolop a good changeup and still needs to work on all his secondary pitchers if he is going to be a good starter. Obviously being in the bullpen will retard his growth as a starter but the yankees did that to Joba too and the team needs Hughes in the bullpen to win this year so I understand.
I think Chamberlain should use his changeup more often. He has a good changeup but Joba sometimes gets to slider happy.
Its importance is overrated to me. You can be an effective ML pitcher with three good pitches.
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