Hughes and Joba: What Shoulda Been

As Phil Hughes pitches another crap game against the Dodgers, we're actually witnessing a fairly significant problem with the Yankees.  In fact, if Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain had become the frontline starters they both had the talent to be, the Yankees could have avoided a lot of the moves and salaries they thought they had to make because they didn't.  

Of course, that they haven't is as much the Yankees fault as it is the fault of Phil or Joba.   After Phil Hughes injured his hamstring throwing that partial no-hitter in Texas, he has not been the same pitcher. He stopped really extending his left leg and getting down lower on his finish.   Thus he went from being a groundball producing, harder thrower with a sick curve and good change to a taller, flyball, arm thrower whose curve has lost it's bite and who has lost the feel for his change.   And no one on the Yankees was able to figure it out then, and now it seems as though he'll be gone in free agency.   But in 2006 he looked like a can't miss future ace.  And he missed.  

In 2007. Joba Chamberlain, the four pitch starter,  who would throw 100 in the late innings of starts looked like another ace.   Because the Yanks didn't want to trade for some other teams closer to become the new bridge to Mo, they decided to make their best pitching prospect do it.   That's how we got the Joba rules,  and lost what should have been another ace for us.  Now he's not even a consistent part of the bridge to Mo, and he'll probably be gone next year, too.

I bring this up,  first because Hughes is awful tonight, and secondly because I will be writing about our coming power starters in the next several days, so it's important to remember they don't always work out.