Hughes' New Pitch

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but Phil Hughes is hands-down my favorite Yankee.  I remember skipping classes in law school to watch his major league debut, and even watching games while sitting in the back of my labor law class in awe of the movement on his fastball.  It’s been great watching the young prospect move up from the minor leagues and develop into an 18 game winner last season.  Hughes continues to develop as a pitcher by developing his secondary pitches and yesterday came up with something new.

He pitched in last night’s game against the Jays and introduced his new Slider.  It may not exactly be a slider, but it’s not a curve or cutter either.  The new pitch is actually a variation of Hughes’ cutter.  It lacks the velocity of his cutter and fastball, yet still looks like a fastball to the batters when it’s released from his hand.  Batters are forced to commit early, which caused 6 batters to strike out on that pitch alone last night. (7 total strikeouts on the night)  In the minor leagues, Hughes threw a slider which was cast to the side when he made his way to the Yankees in lieu of his cutter.  His cutter has caused him some problems this spring so Larry Rothschild tweaked his grip, which helped create this new pitch.

Hughes stated this new pitch will be used to get batters off his fastball, which seems to work so far.  It was thrown last night against right handed batters due to the sharp break.   The cutter on the other hand will be used more against lefties, similar to Mariano Rivera.  Obviously it’s much too early to say whether it will be effective long term, but anything that makes his fastball more effective, will yield more strikeouts. 

Now Hughes needs to really develop that changeup and he can have another 18 win season.  Last year he just couldn’t get that changeup down which caused him problems, especially giving up home runs.  Most critics don’t believe AJ Burnett will bounce back to his old self (although everyone thinks Beckett will pitch Boston to the World Series… go figure), but if AJ gets it together, the Yankees could have a monstrous 1-2-3 starting pitcher combination.