Timing of Hughes' injury a little suspicious

Wallace Matthews

May 1, 2008

In the space of three hours, Phil Hughes' future went from bleak to oblique. In the same amount of time, the Yankees' position went from opaque to crystal clear.

For now, Hughes is out of the rotation. But nobody had to break the news to him or tell him that for now, things weren't working out, that his presumably stellar future was being put on hold. Mother Nature, or someone of that ilk, took the gun out of Brian Cashman's hands, or Joe Girardi's, or whoever was to be entrusted with putting the hit on a young man's already dwindling confidence.

It's funny how things like this work themselves out.

Hughes doesn't know when it happened or how it happened, and neither the manager nor the GM could pinpoint precisely when or how they came to learn about it. Hughes said he told no one but the team trainers after he came out of Tuesday night's game. Cashman said he heard about it straight from Hughes' mouth. Girardi chose to lecture the media on Yankee procedures.

Wallace Matthews E-mail | Recent columns

The only thing they all agreed on is suddenly, Phil Hughes is hurt and, consequently, can't make his next start after all. Moreover, he is of necessity going to have to return to the minor leagues, not because he is being demoted but because he will need a rehab start or two.

"Either way, he's going to need to get some work in," Cashman said after last night's 6-2 Yankees loss to the Tigers. "He probably needs to get some time out, in any event, and having some success in some minor-league games will help him get back here."

So now, everybody's happy, with the possible exception of Hughes. "It's frustrating," he said, "but you just gotta deal with it."

If it reads a little fishy, it sounded worse. Faced with their first public relations test of the young season, the Yankees handled it about as adeptly as Jason Giambi handles grounders to his right. Hughes' injury, as convenient as it seems, might be perfectly legitimate. The Yankees did a wonderful job of making it look like a 24-karat fake.

Before last night's game, inquiries into Hughes' future were a point of contention with the Yankees manager, a naturally prickly sort, and the Yankees GM, normally among the most accommodating of men in his position in any sport.

By the seventh inning of last night's game, the sore spot had shifted from the collective Yankees butt to the right side of Hughes' abdomen. Just like that the team had bought itself two more weeks to think things over. Hughes, suffering from an injury apparently incurred at the pregame buffet table, was placed on the 15-day DL, tabling, for the moment, the second of four decisions that will determine the fate of this Yankees season.

The first decision was made in December, when the Yankees opted out of the Johan Santana Sweepstakes, placing their 2008 fate largely in the hands of two kids with 16 major-league starts and 91 major-league innings between them. The third decision will involve Ian Kennedy, who along with Hughes made up the tandem that convinced the Yankees to allow Santana to try to save the Mets instead.

The fourth, of course, will be to determine when to do the inevitable - pluck Joba Chamberlain out of the bullpen and place him in the rotation.

"Not at this stage, no," Cashman said when asked if the time was right to make Chamberlain a starter, as per the preference of the co-chairman, Hank Steinbrenner.

Hughes was still the No. 3 starter until the Yankees were miraculously spared having to make the tough call, made more miraculous by the fact that before the game, neither Cashman nor Girardi mentioned the possibility of injury.

This, of course, does not necessarily make the Yankees liars, but it adds a whole new dimension to one of Cashman's favorite, and most mysterious, terms: The Process. As in, "The process is under way."

Last night, it was easy to suspect The Process involved finding a way out of making an immediate decision about Hughes, while at the same time limiting the amount of damage he could do on the field.

After all, there is a lot riding on the performance of both Hughes and Kennedy. For the Yankees, they mean the season. For Cashman, they could mean his job.