Let's start with the heralded debut of Phil Hughes from Thursday night. I watched it, and let me say he didn't look quite as bad as the pitching line shows. His first inning was a bit rough, as Alex Rios, Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas got hard hits to produce two runs. No shame there. Hughes also threw a wild pitch, but hey, you're 20 and in your major league debut, you wouldn't be nervous? Plenty of others have had that problem.
Hughes gave up just a few base runners in the next three innings, even though he consistently fell behind hitters, and he allowed no more runs until the fifth. Even then, it wasn't like the Jays lit him up that inning. Infield single, stolen base, Wells gets another hit and the kid is gone with the Big Hurt striding to the plate. A sac fly scored another run with Brian Bruney on the mound. Really, it's not a bad outing at all.
Overall Hughes lacked the command his minor league stats show, which is no surprise. These are major league hitters. Hughes looked scared to walk anyone, so he ended up grooving too many pitches. He threw only 53 of 91 pitches for strikes, and as Buster Olney notes in his terrific blog Hughes was behind in the count for six of the seven hits. I'd also like to see if Hughes can actually hold runners on base or not. He didn't seem to care much about that, but he's got plenty of time to learn.
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Eric Karabell
