Yankees vs. Rays and 5th Starter
Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain both saw their first live action of the spring today. Hughes started the game and went two innings throwing 34 pitches. In the first inning of the game Hughes’ looked shaky, throwing 21 pitches and allowing three hard hit balls. The odd thing about Hughes’ first inning was that all three hard hit balls were recorded outs (hard one hopper to Jeter, hard line drive to Thames in LF, and hard grounder to Tex at first). The only ball that wasn’t hit well in the first inning was a fastball on the outer half of the plate that Rays 2 hitter, Sean Rodriguez, lifted to center. With the wind whipping in Tampa, the ball was blown over Granderson’s head before coming down just beyond the center field wall. Hughes proved much more effective in his second inning of work as the Rays hitters struggled to square the ball up. However, he did continue to struggle with his control. In his two innings of work Hughes threw 5 changeups (3 straight at one point), 2 of which were strikes.
Joba took over the mound in the third inning for the Yankees and I hoped to be more impressed with him than I was with Hughes. However, he immediately disappointed as he walked the leadoff batter on just 5 pitches before allowing back-to-back pitches to Jason Bartlett and Sean Rodriguez. Joba recorded his first out of the game when he got the 4th batter of the inning (Longoria) to groundout to third allowing Rodriguez to score. Joba then walked Zobrist and got Upton for pop out to very shallow right field for the 2nd out of the inning. On the first pitch to the next batter Posada tried to snap a throw down to first to pick off Zobrist but it was off the mark. The throw was recovered by Cano as Zobrist attempted to advance to second base, but Cano got the ball to Jeter at 2nd just in time to make the tag to end the inning. In his first inning of work Joba threw 22 pitches and was very wild. Joba came out to the mound to begin the 4th inning for the Yankees. Again Joba walked the leadoff batter (Navarro), this time on 4 straight pitches. However, he bounced back and got a strikeout on 3 straight pitches. The next batter Joba faced sliced a fastball down the right field line for a ground rule double and Joba was lifted from the game. Both runners 
that Joba allowed to reach ended up scoring. Joba’s line – 1.1 IP, 5 ER, 3 hits, 3 walks, 1 K, 34 pitches.
With both 5th starter candidates looking less than impressive, (Hughes performed the better of the two but was still hit hard) this adds even more fuel to the fire for the battle for the 5th spot argument. It also potentially opens up more dialogue on the possibility of Mitre, Gaudin, or Aceves being named the fifth starter. However, Joba’s poor performance could be a result of hangover symptoms from a flu-like illness that he has been suffering the past few days. Joba has not worked out in 3 days aside from a short bullpen yesterday and he estimated that he was at about 60-7o % today.
Notes from the Yankees offense in the first 3 innings: Jeter led off the game with a first pitch line drive between first and second which was referred to by Micahel Kay as a “Jeterian base hit”. In the second inning Cano lined a ball up the middle for a base hit and Swisher worked an 8 pitch walk. Price’s stats were good in his outing but he was pulled after 1.2 IP because he had reached his pitch limit as a result of going into a lot of deep counts. Francisco Cervelli led off the third inning with a triple, yes that’s right, Cervelli hit a triple. On a full count he lined a ball into left-center and the Rays right fielder Sean Rodriguez dove to cut the ball off. While Rodriguez stopped the ball he didn’t realize that it tricked behind him and got up trying to throw the baseball that he didn’t have. Cervelli noticed that he didn’t have the ball and hustled to third just in time to slide under the tag. The Yankees were unable to score in the inning despite having a runner on third with no outs.
Feel free to give your thoughts on Joba vs. Phil and talk about the Yankees vs. Rays game today.
Photos courtesy of Zimbio.com
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