Keep Him Up

It was not perfection by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a lot to like about what the Ace of the fucha showed in his major league debut. Most importantly, he didn't walk the park, which I've seen in so many debuts, that it's become more trite than worrisome to me. No, Phil posted a 5/1 strikeout to walk ratio in 4.1 ip. I think it would have been even more impressive if a) the ump wasn't squeezing the kid a bit and b) Po wasn't calling fastballs in fastball counts to people like Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas. The ability of Hughes and Posada to set up hitters will come, but I think their unfamiliarity lead to more hits than we'll generally see for Hughes tonight.

Anyway, the Yanks should keep him up. He's better than Karstens, Rasner, Wright and Igawa and it won't be much longer before he's better than all of them. He's that good, and he doesn't even have his plus/plus fastball yet. At this stage their's nothing to be gained or learned from him doing to AAA what he did to AA. In fact, he's better spending the next several months in a pennant race with Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, Mo Rivera, Ron Guidry and just maybe Roger Clemens. Mussina's already done some mentoring with him and it's time for the lessons to continue, in the majors where Hughes belongs.

BTW, he was sensationally self possessed in his postgame interview. Good show, even if it was a bad result.