Yankees' Hughes Looks Like the Real Deal

It's already that time of year when people start talking about the top prospects in the game. To what extent this is the result of the vagaries of publishing schedules and the fantasy baseball calendar is left to the reader to determine, but this year we're starting to see something unusual: A growing consensus that a Yankee, Philip Hughes, is among the game's elite prospects. Scouts Inc.'s Keith Law rated him as the top man in the minors, Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein called him "the best pitching prospect in the game," and John Sickels called him "the best pitching prospect in baseball." These three are respected talent evaluators, none of them liable to throw claims like that around, and their words carry some weight. It's one thing to hear from the proverbial anonymous baseball official that Hughes is the real deal, another to hear it from an independent party whose reputation rests on being able to make balanced judgments based on indepth knowledge of all 30 teams' farm systems.

For Yankees fans, this means two things. First, any fears that Hughes is just another product of the same hype machine that brought you Brad Halsey and Ed Yarnall can be set aside. Hughes is not guaranteed ever to do so much as throw a pitch in Yankee Stadium, but he's as good a bet as any minor leaguer to do great things in the game. Second, any concerns about the state of the Yankees' rotation should be balanced against the near certainty that Hughes will make a substantial impact this season, and the distinct possibility that he is, as of right now, the team's best starter.

Concern that Hughes is just another chump is understandable but misplaced. Whatever you look for in a pitching prospect, Hughes has it. He's young (he turns 21 in June) and huge (6-foot-5, 220). He has great stuff, with excellent command of two fastballs, the harder of which coming in as high as 96 mph, as well as a hard curveball and a change-up. He has an immaculate statistical record, with a 269/54 K/BB ratio, only six home runs allowed, a solid ground ball rate, and a 2.13 ERA in 237.1 minor league innings. He has a clean health record, hasn't been overworked, and has pitched enough to prove he has the durability to be a starter. He hasn't had any notable run-ins with teammates, umpires, opponents, or the law so far in his young career. If you were to design a top pitching prospect, you'd come up with Hughes.

Further good news for Yankees fans is that one worry they may have is misplaced, and that's fear that no matter how bright and shiny Hughes may be, he hasn't yet pitched at Triple-A, and thus isn't ready for the big leagues. It's nonsense; truly elite prospects rarely spend much time in Triple-A, both because they don't need to and because it's better for them to learn on the job in the majors against the tougher competition. Just look up the records of any of the really great pitching prospects of the last 10 years. Mark Prior made three starts in Triple-A, Kerry Wood made 10, Scott Kazmir made none, and Rick Ankiel made 16. All demonstrated why they were considered studs as soon as they stepped foot on a major league mound. Barring injury, Hughes is going to be ready by June, and there's little reason to think he wouldn't be ready to take the ball right out of spring training.

This brings us to the real question: Should Hughes, assuming he has reasonable success in spring training, break camp with the team? In a literal sense, the answer is surely no — with the early season schedule, you can't guarantee a no. 5 starter regular work in April, and you don't actually even need him anyway. The broader sense of the question, though, is about where he ranks among Yankees starters. Statistically, a case can be made that he's better than any of them: Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA system projects an ERA of 3.91, best on the staff (and better, one notes, than that projected for new Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka). Of course a lot more goes into being a top starter than a pretty statistical projection, and no one save perhaps Mrs. Hughes would rather see the ball in his hand than in Andy Pettite's in a big game. That's for now, though; four months as the team's best starter would change an awful lot. Baseball, for whatever its problems, is very much a meritocracy.

We'll see how Hughes does, and it's worth keeping in mind that even an enormous impact this year would guarantee nothing for the long term, as the examples of Prior, Wood, and Ankiel should show vividly. For now, though, it's February, and baseball is all about hope, and anyone who can't wait for spring can just think about Philip Hughes, who has every chance to be the best homegrown starter this team has had since Whitey Ford. It's something.

tmarchman@nysun.com