Yanks continue to overpower Twins as Hughes authors longest outing of season

By On August 20, 2011 · 9 Comments · In Game Recaps

(Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)

We’ll start with , who held the Twins to a mere two hits over 7 2/3 innings — his longest outing of the season — as the Yankees beat Minnesota Friday night. While Hughes was both efficient (needing only 106 pitches to complete nearly eight innings) and effective (70 of those pitches were strikes), he also only recorded two strikeouts (and only two swinging strikes) against three walks. By my rough calculations, his GB% for this game was only 38%, and his BABIP was a nonexistent .048, so yeah, you could probably say Phil got a little lucky in this one, but 7.2 innings of one-run ball — even against an opponent scuffling as badly as Minnesota is — is still 7.2 innings of one-run ball. And who knows, perhaps playing in Minnesota made him feel like giving the whole pitching-to-contact thing a whirl.

Hughes was backed by a two-home-run game from , along with a three-RBI game by , as the Yankees pounded out 13 hits. , in his first start of the season, fared nearly as poorly as rotationmate did on Thursday night, going 5.2 innings and giving up 6 runs on 9 hits.

The only damage done against Hughes was a homer by — who came into the game with a .297 wOBA, so of course he ended up going yard — all the way back in the first. Hughes settled down after that and retired the Twins in order from the third through sixth innings.

Tagged with: • • •
 
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Delicious Digg

9 Responses to Yanks continue to overpower Twins as Hughes authors longest outing of season

  1. Steve S. says:
    August 20, 2011 at 9:29 am

    I think it is time we stop referring to him as Phil Hughes and begin calling him by his proper name, Mr #2 October Starter.

    Reply
  2. Adam B says:
    August 20, 2011 at 9:43 am

    part of me wants to say Phil got lucky in this one… but, he only gave up 2 hits… that is impressive against any team.

    Reply
    • Matt Imbrogno says:
      August 20, 2011 at 9:51 am

      Yeah, giving up only two hits is fantastic, but the 2/3 K/BB is cause for just a little concern.

      Reply
      • smurfy says:
        August 20, 2011 at 10:30 am

        I wouldn’t guess that he’s lucky, but that teams will recognize his new (mixed) approach, and look for counter-attacks. And some games his command will vary, depends if he’s on the upswing.

        Reply
  3. smurfy says:
    August 20, 2011 at 9:49 am

    The Yanks’ bats were cracking and, actually, bloooking* out line drive after solid, elevated liners that cleared the walls by plenty. The glorious tone (*you try spelling that sound) of the bat, last night, was remarkable for its frequency. And I’m not talking about pitch.

    Please request, foment and demand on every occasion that YES figures out how to get that sound from Yankee Stadium like they delivered it from the Target Field. Hire the Foley guys, buy a new parabolic mike, take the corks out of the sound receivers, whatever it takes, but gimme that wonderful SOUND!

    Oh, yeah: keep the Yanks hitting like that, too (Posada, Martin, Cano, Posada, Martin …)

    Reply
  4. Steve says:
    August 20, 2011 at 10:54 am

    I don’t see any cause for concern with Hughes off of the Twins game… His FB is clearly not all the way back, but it will come back eventually. He was geat last night – and I’m not going to penalize him because he wasn’t facing the 1927 Yankees. My biggest concern with Phil has always been the over-reliance on the cutter and his lack of secondary pitches. He’s making great strides in that regard. I would think people would be thrilled with the progress he’s making. He just needs to keep pitching and his real FB will return – maybe not even until next year – but until then, he’s been very good of late – not much to complain about at all.

    Reply
  5. BklynBigCat says:
    August 20, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    Hughes is building momentum for sure. Not counting tonight’s start, ERA and FiP by month: March & April (13.94/8.62) July (5.48/4.08) August (2.19/2.93)

    Reply
  6. Game Preview | Yankees vs. Twins III: Not really fair | New York Yankees blog, Yankees blog, A blog about the New York Yankees | The Yankee Analysts says:
    September 19, 2011 at 9:05 am

    [...] good results but represented a continuation of his season-long poor process. Hughes put together perhaps his best outing of the season against the Twins last month, although he only struck out two men and was the beneficiary of an extraordinary dose of good BABIP [...]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Set your Twitter account name in your settings to use the TwitterBar Section.