It was a tale of two pitchers yesterday in New York baseball: one having a break out year, the other, perhaps a break down year.
In the Bronx, 24-year-old Phil Hughes continued his early season domination, emerging in his second full season in the bigs as one of the best pitchers in the American League–dominating with a back up cutter inside to righties, a deadly fastball, and superb control. Hughes is now 3-0 with a 1.44 ERA and a 0.88 WHIP having allowed only 10 hits in 25 innings pitched with 24 strike outs. With each year he has shown forward progress, adding upper body bulk between 2008 and 2009, and this year adding a change up, new confidence in his cutter, and the kind of poise, control and mound presence that have made him second in the AL in ERA, second in WHIP, and first in batting average against (.122).
In Philadelphia, Johan Santana–returning from injury and looking old before his time at 31–wasn’t fooling anyone with his changeup, or with any other pitch: He nibbled, issuing a bases loaded walk to a 40-year old opposing pitcher; or, when he threw a ball in the strike zone, got pounded, allowing 4 homers and 10 earned runs in 3.2 innings of work and sounding mystified by the experience telling Brian Costa at the Star-Ledger: ”I felt pretty good. I had a good warm-up and I felt like everything was fine. It was just one inning when everything went crazy and my fastball just went off and I wasn’t able to command it. That was about it.”
Some have said that Santana’s fastball is off by a few MPH, narrowing the gap between his fastball and his bread-and-butter change-up, but velocity wasn’t a problem last night. Everything else was.
More than a bad loss–even great pitchers like Santana can have brutal nights and he had one similar to this one just a year ago against the Yankees–was sight of the Phillies taking it to Santana a day after clobbering Mike Pelfry, who Mets fans were hoping was emerging as a young, legit number two starter (he had a 0.69 ERA before his pounding Saturday by the Phils). After their great homestand, the Mets first test against the team to beat in the NL was a bust.
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