Hughes's Growing Pains Continue

Phil Hughes stumbled again Tuesday night as the Yankees fell to the Tigers 6-4. The problems began early for Hughes as he allowed the first two runners he faced to reach, by way of a walk and a single. They later scored on a Magglio Ordonez base hit to center and the Yankees quickly found themselves down 2-0.

In the bottom of the second Robinson Cano evened the score with a 2-run shot to right, but it was short-lived...

The third inning inning proved to be Hughes's undoing as the Tigers pounced on him for 3 runs, including home runs by Curtis Granderson and Gary Sheffield...Unfortunately, the Yankees were down 5-2 quickly in this one and could never make up the deficit...

The question is, what are the Yankees to do with Phil Hughes? Give him another shot? Send him down to AAA? It's not an easy answer because even if you send him down, who takes his place in the rotation? Igawa? Rasner? I'd take a chance on Rasner if I had to choose between the 2 given his current level of success in the minors...but I'm not sure it's clear than any of these options are better...

A couple of questions I'd ask Joe Girardi if I had the chance:

Why are we sitting Melky Cabrera, clearly our best center fielder on a night when you have a young pitcher who could use the defensive support?

Why isn't Jose Molina behind the plate, a more experienced catcher, rather than Stewart?...Molina by the way was also catching Hughes last week when Hughes looked like he was on his way to a good outing....I'd take my chances that Molina will work better with Hughes...the level of miscommunication between Hughes and Stewart was hard to believe...

These moves simply didn't make sense to me...please keep your best defensive team on the field behind a young pitcher who needs every advantage he can get!

Additional Notes:

Ohlendorf was impressive in his 3+ innings of work...in fact so was LaTroy Hawkins and Edwar Ramirez who pitched an inning each of shutout ball...the bullpen didn't allow a run...too bad we can't say the same about Hughes...

The Yankee offense is in quite a funk...now with the news that both A-Rod and Posada will be spending time on the DL, it's hard to see how the offense will come around, but it comes down to this:

People will have to step up!

Tomorrow night Pettitte takes the hill. GO YANKS!