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It drives me crazy when people talk about this kid being the next Seaver or Gooden. They talk like he's the savior of the Yankees.

He's 20.

He's good, we all know that. But, we don't want to A-Rod him, where even when an off-year is still a good year, it's not good enough.

I hope he doesn't get called up this year. I still believe Pettite was brought in, among other reasons, to buy Hughes some more time in the minors.

Some guy in Sports Illustrated predicted a midseason callup, with a sub 3 era and something like a 9-6 record.

Let him work, let him earn it.

If Hughes turned into the next John Smoltz, I think everyone in Yankeeland would be ecstatic.

I agree that he needs to start the year in Scranton, but there comes a point where talent just forces the issue, like it did with Liriano last year and Huston Street the year before.

when i watched him today, one thought occurred to me: he needs to mature. what that means is he needs to refine his overall pitching. i dont know if it was nerves or just the beginning of the year rust, but his control was way off. his FB command was ok, and frankly got hosed on a couple borderline calls, and even his change was decent, but his curve was all over. his first was way high, the next was in the dirt, and it was a curve that got hammered for the 2b. Morneau also crushed his curve 400 ft. foul. remember, he's still just 20!

it IS kinda a good thing if Hughes pitches mediocre this spring, because hopefully the enormous hype will die down (NY Post). But i'm afraid the stupid people who boo Arod will boo Hughes if he doesn't excel as soon as he's called up. Hughes' MO is that it takes him several starts to adjust to each new level, then he dominates. i just hope when he is called up, he's allowed to go through his adjustment period by Torre, the media and fans.

on the bright side, his change definitely seems to be improving. and Ohlendorf and Wang looked very good.

I signed up for a TypeKey account just to tell you how retarded you are. What kind of fan wishes that a young player struggle, just so the "hype dies down"? You may think that Hughes is too young for the majors, but being happy over struggles makes no sense at all. You are a moron.

I also remember a question on this site, asking whether fans would have traded world series titles in '96 and '98 to take away the devastation of losses in '95 and '97. Now that I am able to comment on this site, I just want to say how utterly insane that question is. Who trades titles to avoid the "pain" of not winning? Ask a Red Sox fan if they would trade their '04 World Series in exchange for not winning in '05 or '06. They would look at you as if you were crazy. I don't remember if that was the same author who proposed that question as the one who wrote this entry, but if it was you have a seriously messed up way of rooting for a baseball team.

I'm not going to use the same language as Dom, but I agree with him -- wanting to see Hughes struggle or fail is pointless and wrongheaded, to say the least. Hughes is a very mature, levelheaded kid. The success isn't getting to his head. He's not going to get some kind of god complex and think he's invincible.

Struggling in AAA will be a huge step back for him -- in a sense, a failure -- and there's no reason to wish that upon our best prospect.

If you've heard Hughes interviewed, he's very humble -- he knows he will have to take his lumps in the big leagues and that pitching in the Bronx will not be easy.

He needs to start in AAA, and I think he'll spend the year there, but I sure hope he repeats his AA numbers there -- it's the best thing for him and this team.

dom, thanks for the kind words. it seems you didn't quite grasp what i meant.

i never said i was happy over Hughes' struggles. i merely said "it IS kinda a good thing if Hughes pitches mediocre this spring, because hopefully the enormous hype will die down." i dont know how you made the leap from this to assuming i'd be happy if a prospect struggled. part of the reason i believe that Wang and Cano have fared so well is that they were never top prospects, and the media and fans (and even team) didn't expect too much from them. when the NY Post touts a prospect as the next 'Rocket,' that's impossible to live up to. it deludes the casual/average fan who picks up the paper and expects Hughes to dominate from his MLB debut. the fickleness of fans is such that they even booed DEREK JETER, and continue to boo Arod (after winning the damn MVP). i seriously believe the media and fan discontent with Arod contributed to his struggles last year. and i fear the same will happen with Hughes if the fans think he's going to dominate from day 1.

I agree with Steve 100%.
I read many Yankee blogs and the expectations on Hughes are out of hand. I hope we don't need to bring him up this year, and he gets a full year at AAA.

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

Has anyone ever heard that before? The best learning experiences come from making mistakes. Hughes has not made any mistakes, in terms of experiencing a string of failure. If he does have such a run, he will be a better player for having gone through it - before making the major leagues.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" is another rule that applies here.

Keep in mind here guys, I'm not rooting for Hughes to flop. I'm just saying that a brush with mere-mortal performance results may just be better for Hughes, and those with lofty expectations on him, than if he just continues to have no challenges.

In any event, thanks for calling me "retarded" Dom - I haven't heard that term used as a way to insult someone since I was in the 3rd grade - and that was a few decades ago. At my age, anything that can bring me back to younger/better days is a nice break from reality.

Now, if you would have told me to stick bubble gum in my hair and to wash it out with gravy, well, man, that would have brought me back too. Perhaps you can spring that on me someday in the future now that you have a TypeKey account?

Wishing for someone to lose now so they win in the future seems like bad logic, something you would hear them make fun of on firejoemorgan.com. Loosing at the AAA level makes sense on absolutely no levels regardless of how important you think it is for a young pitcher to take his knocks.

Low expectations does not equal success. No one has expected anything from Carl Pavano in a long time, and he certainly has met these no expectations.

Given the current state of the Yankee rotation, Hughes might be the best starter the Yankees have. While its important that they minimize the health risks with Hughes, remember how the Tigers rode their young pitchers all the way to the World Series last year. Hughes should certainly be in the Bronx no later than the summer.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone who is related to/has retarded friends. And you're welcome for the flashback.

~~~Low expectations does not equal success. ~~~

And, high and lofty expectations does not make it easy for you when you do not meet them at first.

That's my point. I'm not saying that changing expectations, by lowering them, make him a lock, or more of one. I'm just saying that it gives him some wiggle room. pressure-wise, when he gets his first chance.

If he can pitch, he can pitch, regardless of hype or expectations.

He'll take his lumps like any other pitcher, but hopefully those will be few and far in between.

"If he can pitch, he can pitch, regardless of hype or expectations."
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this is mostly true, but it's not that black & white. Expectations, at the very least, do affect the way teams treat players, RJ for example. the expectations when he came to NY were very high, and he one good year and one bad year. what happens? he's traded bc he's been disappointing. he failed to live up to expectations. same thing with Vazquez, Irabu, Rogers, Weaver, Contreras, the latter of which one could certainly say was affected by pressure from being over-hyped.

and do you not think Arod's play last year, especially the 24 errors, was at all affected by the negativity from the fans/media? and why? bc they were expecting another MVP season. baseball is the most mental of all sports.

what happens when they expect Hughes to be Clemens, and he fails to achieve it? the media rips him apart, the fans boo him, and he possibly even gets traded. And y'all know how unforgiving Torre is with rookies.

No one is saying close to we want Hughes to fail. i think what me and Steve are saying is that Hughes needs refinement in the pressure-less lights of Scranton, PA. we don't want him refining his game in the pressure cooker of Yankee Stadium. if he fails at such a young age, it could affect his confidence, maybe long-term. And we're interested in the long-term success of Hughes and the Yanks, not just this season. He's just 20. There's no rush. And maturing mentally is just as important as physically. There's a reason Cash Money said he wouldn't be upset to have Hughes spend all 2006 in AAA.

All those trades that happened made sense from a baseball standpoint. RJ was traded because he expressed a desire to be closer to home.

The other trades made sense from a baseball standpoint, high expectations or not.

As for ARod, who knows? Could be the extra weight he was supposedly carrying, could be a random fluke. Offensively overall, he was pretty close to 2004.

If the Yanks make moves based on what the local rags write, then they have bigger issues to worry about.

I'm taking the same tack as you and Steve; I'm not looking for him to fail. Having said that, I'm more concerned with him refining himself in Scranton than in NY, but the pressure argument has little to do with it. If he can pitch, he can pitch, be it the "pressure cooker" of NY (which is bunk, IMO; if you can play, you can play), or out on a sandlot somewhere in E. Armpit, flyover country.

If he spends the year in AAA, that's fine. If he makes the team out of ST, that's fine too. Can't see any downside to him hanging out with the veterans on the staff.

Wow, I think you guys are completely off base here. He's 20 years old, I don't think anyone expects him to come in and pitch lights out right away. It was his first game and it's spring training, there's a reason why they have a pre-season you know. Also, if Hughes did make the team and had a 4.80 ERA for the season, as long as he was a competetive player and showed heart there is no way the fans would trash or boo him. Randy Johnson got boo'd because he was a jerk and he didn't live up to his previous performance in the MAJOR LEAGUES. Hughes has never pitched in the majors and I don't think any fans are going to expect him to pitch how he did in the minors right away, and they might not even know his stats in the minors. You want Hughes to pitch good on any level that he pitches on, to want him to not do good is just ridiculous.

Also, don't you think he would feel MORE pressure if he pitches badly? I certainly do...I remember in high school trying to make the varsity team and the first few times I got up to hit in the preseason I hit the ball solid and got base hits and it relieved so much pressure off of me and let me know that I could play on that level. Even though I knew I could do it, you don't really know for sure until you actually go out there and perform at that level. I'm sure that if Hughes has success early on, it will be an even bigger boost to his confidence with can only help.

~~~Wow, I think you guys are completely off base here. He's 20 years old, I don't think anyone expects him to come in and pitch lights out right away. ~~~

Actually, that's all I ever seem to hear.

"Given the current state of the Yankee rotation, Hughes might be the best starter the Yankees have."

Dom, that is exactly the type of hype the Yankees/Hughes do not need. He has never pitched above AA, and you are even thinking about putting him above Pettitte, Mussina and Wang (Igawa is still an unknown quantity at this point). Heck, even Carl Pavano, for all the (mostly fair) ripping he receives has at least shown an ability to get out major league hitters. Phil can dominate mid to low minor leaguers, the majority of whom will not play in the bigs. He does need to face some adversity against better players, and thus learn how to pitch.

And not that I think Hughes is stupid enough to wind up as a cokehead, but Strawberry & Gooden were so good so young, I think that helped make them think they were invincible. Some humility is a good thing.

Sports arguments do tend to stretch from one end of the spectrum to the other. Jeez. Now we have Hughes as a potential drug burnout. Chillll, people.

Hughes doesn't need to be taught humility -- he's already humbled. Humility doesn't only come from humiliation. I tip my hat to Hughes' parents, because they raised him right. He's a mature-beyond-his-years, smart, poised young man. Physically he needs the year in AAA, but mentally this kid would be just fine. He's human, but he clearly understands the challenge ahead.

Here's a reason not to want to see Hughes fail: because EVERYONE (outside of Yankee fans) wants to see him fail. Whenever there's a top prospect, everyone wants him to crash and burn so they can dismiss him. And even some Yankee fans seem to want him to fail just so they can say "I told you so." There are many people who don't believe in young players period, so when they don't do well, these people think it proves the point that no young player can be trusted.

Every fan, manager, GM, etc., etc., of rival teams hopes Hughes falls apart and never makes the big leagues.

Hoping for him to struggle at any level -- for "humility" or otherwise -- is incomprehensible to me.

It's true that we should lower our expectations a bit (for now, not long term) -- after all, Hughes has become so big that ESPN's main highlights of the spring training game were of him -- I don't think hoping he struggles at the next level helps him or anyone else.

yeah, those were moves from a 'baseball standpoint' because of what i'm saying: they failed to live up to their expectations.

as far as the 'pressure cooker' thing, first something is bunk, then you de-bunk it. anyway, try telling Conteras, Weaver, Arod and Rogers that pressure is the same in NYC than any other city. do you seriously think that pressure DOESN'T effect players at all? c'mon now.

antone, i do not think hughes would be booed after a full season of 4.80 era. but what about Santana's first year era of 6.49? it WOULD happen then, probably by the same 'fans' who boo Arod for striking out.

bailey, who is saying they want hughes to fail? i haven't seen that once. and frankly, I've heard professional scouts/GMs say you want your prospects to struggle at somepoint because they WILL struggle in the ML, so to have the experience of getting through it before is invaluable. i WANT hughes to be the next Clemens, but i dont expect it.

Torre: "When you track his career so far, he really hasn't struggled at all," Torre said. "Anything he experiences here, even if it's of a negative nature - and that was far from negative - is going to help him."

Travis...

There is no way Hughes would last a whole season with a 6.49, he'd be back in the minors if he struggled that badly. That's assuming he even makes the opening day roster which my guess is he won't unless he lights it up in spring training and they have no choice but to keep him. That also would mean that one of the other starters would be cut or put into the bullpen and we already have seen that roster spots are going to be tight. Hughes is going back to the minors more than likely so there's no point in even discussing all this BS right now, let's just wait until Pavano, Pettite, and Mussina get hurt and they have to bring up Hughes before we discuss his performance and how the fans will react.

^ isn't this what blogs and the internet are mainly for?

anyway, try telling Conteras, Weaver, Arod and Rogers that pressure is the same in NYC than any other city. do you seriously think that pressure DOESN'T effect players at all? c'mon now.
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Sure. You think pitching in NY is somehow more stressful than defecting from Cuba? Contreras had one good year, and one bad year. It happens.

Weaver got lit up as a Dodger, as an Angel, and as a Cardinal. I'm sure he faced varying degrees of pressure there. Matter of fact, if it were a case where he couldn't handle the pressure, he should've reverted to ace form once he left NY. That he didn't shows that maybe it was something other than "pressure"

Rogers had one good year and one bad year. His first year was in line with his career, the bad year came when he was coming off surgery. It happens.

As for ARod, what people overlook is that in 2006, the year he supposedly forgot how to play in the "pressure cooker" that is NY, he actually hit better at home than he did on the road.

If you've got game, you can play no matter the venue.