Monday, March 5, 2012

Yankees Rotation Prediction

The conventional wisdom is that the Yankees starting rotation will consist of Fatsah Sabathia, Shouldah Kuroda, Super Nova, Raidah Pineda, and Refuse to Hughes. I concede that this may be the case on opening day, but come mid-May or, at the latest, June, Garcia will be our number 5 starter.

Excuse my skepticism, but I just don't see Hughes being a long-term solution for the Yankees' rotation. There are two interrelated reasons for this. The first is that Hughes doesn't throw very fast. He just doesn't, and there is nothing you can do about that. The second reason is that Hughes doesn't have the sort of control and/or pitch repertoire necessary to make his low 90s fastball work. Maybe he could get away with his stuff on the Diamondbacks, but not in the AL East or the AL in general.

I strongly suspect that Hughes will not last much longer in the starting rotation than he did last year. I know he pitched well in 2010, at least for the first half of the season, but remember when Lee Mazzilli was managing the Os and they were kicking everybody's @$$ through May, and then did nothing from there on out? Yeah. Welcome to Phil Hughes. He's our Baltimore Oriole.

No comments: