So…not a bust quite yet? I’m so confused.

[1] Hughes confuses you? Join the club.

I said all along this Hughes kid could be something special.

Actually, of course, I didn’t.  But I’m happy.

People could get rich betting against the things I say.

Not sure how to read this in a negative light…are you saying he’s giving up more first pitch homers now?

[4]
Nice work.

I’ll take some of the credit for his bad games… When he rides my fantasty bench, he’s good. When I start him, jeff’s not. He’s my fantasty bench coach from here out…

He’s not. **Not Jeff’s not**

[6] In similar fashion, I should probably drop Wade who has been terrible since I picked him up.

[4] Well done
So maybe abandoning the cutter was a good thing.  I like the two different curveballs version of the Phranchise.

Wouldn’t it be pretty comical - and terrific - if this ended up with a rotation fronted by Hughes and Joba?
/hope abandoned ages ago]

[10] Maybe AZ will trade Kennedy now that he’s not pitching that great…

[11]
Right! For Soriano, who will then opt out and re-sign with NYA for less money - in fact, for the contract they should have had them for if they hadn’t bid against themselves.

[9] Yes. I think a lot of this is actually pretty simple to tease out. We know he’s abandoned the cutter, which was getting tattooed, and he’s been pitching with career-high control for some reason.

So as a result, he’s given up on a pitch that was causing more home runs, and even when he does give up a homer now it’s less likely to be with men on base. To me that sounds like a basic recipe for a better ERA…consider if he had thrown an ill-timed cutter to Pierzynski yesterday with two men on. Bam, now we’re looking at 5 ER in 6 or 7 innings and another Bad Phil start. Instead he got AJ to pop out and wound up with 2 ER in 8.

Still not sure why he’s been more efficient. We know his stuff is better and he seems to be locating his curve now, so that could be it..he’s shown that he can drop the curve in for strike 3, or throw a quality fastball located on the corner, so hitters are more uncomfortable in 0-2 counts instead of being able to sit on a pitch.

[13] I remember one of the numbers from the RAB article a few weeks ago was how bad he was in 0-2 and 1-2 counts. I bet that his performance in those situations has drastically improved, which would certainly help efficiency.

I think maybe Cashman had Mussina’s brain transplanted into Hughes’ body.  Okay, Cash isn’t perfect, but you have to admit this was a genius move.

[14] I just checked BR, and you’re right. Both of those numbers have come down a decent amount since that article. It’s been just two starts, though, so I guess we wait before making any judgments from the data.

I got 3 months free Sirius with the new VW.  They of course want me to renew.  Can someone let them know that a channel devoted to the Mad Dog isn’t a selling point?

Wade down, Qualls up per RAB

[17] Yes, but Evans and Phillips can be worth it in the morning.  Steve Phillips was an annoying pontificating blowhard on ESPN, but on radio he’s a sarcastic pontificating blowhard.

During the NCAA tournament they had someone on talking with Evan about the teams and sleepers and contenders and Phillips giggled and someone asked what insight he had and he said, “well, *giggle* if they’re long and athletic and if they hit their 3s they can be dangerous ... c’mon - this shit ain’t hard ... can I say ‘shit’?”

[0] is there a benchmark or league average number we can compare Fuse with?

[20] A P/PA of 4 is excellent for a batter iirc.  I see that there are 23 such players in the AL at the moment.  Granderson is fourth at 4.3.

MLB average for qualified starting pitchers is 3.8.  I didn’t split out NL pitchers so probably a bit higher for AL.