Besides the fact that the Yankees haven’t actually played a game in two days, pitching coach Dave Eiland tells us that it’s still way too early to name a front-runner to be the club’s fifth starter:
“I don’t think anyone has pulled ahead,” pitching coach Dave Eiland
said. “Ace has thrown the ball extremely well, but as of right now, if
we had to pick, we really couldn’t pick one. They haven’t been out there
long enough.”
“When you say results, it’s not just numbers,” Eiland said. “It’s the
quality of each pitch, working ahead in the count, first-pitch strikes,
stuff, command. How economical are they? Are the outs hard-hit? You can
go out and pitch a few innings, give up lasers all over the field but
walk away up no hits and no runs. That doesn’t mean you made a lot of
good pitches.”
Chamberlain and Hughes obviously have the most talent of the lot, but Eiland sees room for improvement in each. He believes that Hughes needs to better utilize his changeup to be an effective starter while Chamberlain needs to get ahead in the count more often. For what it’s worth (seemingly little), Aceves has yet to allow a run in six innings of work this spring, while Mitre has pitched five scoreless frames.
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- GimmeSomeSteel - Mar 13, 2010 at 12:38 AM
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Translation: We’re going to go with the guy we decided on months ago, no matter how badly he pitches in ST. Our crack staff is working on the rationalization as we speak.
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- Nasty Boy - Mar 13, 2010 at 12:42 AM
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I hope the Yankees go with Aceves, I feel he proved himself last year. It should be between Gaudin, and Mitre after that. I know this may sound crazy , but I think Chamberlain is overrated. I feel his best spot would be in the bull pen. To be honest , I’m not really sure about that. I was hoping he was going to be trade bait in the off season,but they kept him. I like Hughes as the eighth inning set up man. Time will tell, but I don’t ever see Chamberlain as a starter.
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- James - Mar 13, 2010 at 1:12 PM
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what happened to the Phil Hughes who no-hit the Rangers through six innings in one of his first few starts in the majors a couple of years ago? He had to leave that game when he hurt his hamstring (and if you recall several Yankees came down with hamstring injuries that year, leading to the firing of their new strength coach). But Hughes had electric stuff in that game (thank the lord for mlb.tv) and had a full complement of pitches that were utterly dominating.
Are they being too nit picky with Hughes, or did he actually take a huge step backwards because of that injury and we haven’t been told?
This kid reminds me of Orel Herscheiser and I can’t believe they aren’t as worried about his innings and development into a starter as they are with Joba.
