Davidoff: Hughes better bring his 'A' game for playoffs

Had this been a playoff start for Phil Hughes . . . it probably wouldn't have featured a win at the end.

Were this October rather than late August, facing a dangerous Rangers, Twins or Rays lineup as opposed to the meek Athletics, we'd hold no discussion of how Hughes ground his way through five uneven innings.

But it is what it is, as Brian McNamee once told Roger Clemens, and the Yankees' 9-3 thumping of Oakland at Yankee Stadium - giving the defending World Series champs sole possession of the American League East for the first time since Aug. 22 - underlined one reason why the 2010 Hughes Rules have worked out considerably better than the 2009 Joba Rules:

Good fortune.

That's not to entirely diss Hughes, who lasted a shaky five innings last night, throwing 98 pitches and walking five (along with two runs, four hits and a strikeout), or to entirely absolve Joba Chamberlain. But it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore that Hughes has benefited from the situation around him, whereas Chamberlain often suffered from the same.

"Everybody's different. Every situation is different," Chamberlain said before the game. "I think last year, we had a better idea of what we needed to do to be successful. Phil's done a tremendous job."

Or, as Hughes put it after the game, in appreciation of his teammates: "I was embarrassed with myself, so I can only imagine how frustrating it was for our guys to watch that."

His five innings, tarnished by a lack of fastball command, put Hughes' season total at 1491/3. He has walked 10 batters in his last two starts, totaling just 82/3 innings. Both he and Joe Girardi denied that fatigue was an issue.

"We didn't waste a lot of innings today," Girardi said afterward, smiling.

With a rough limit of 175 innings, Hughes has about 26 regular-season innings remaining on his odometer. Do the math: With 30 games left, the Yankees would require Hughes' services six more times in a normal rotation, but he has only four or five starts' worth of innings left.

That means at least one skipped turn for Hughes, or maybe two. With long reliever/spot starter types such as Dustin Moseley, Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre hanging around, and with reinforcements coming Wednesday as the roster expands to as many as 40 players, the Yankees can achieve their dual purposes of resting Hughes and not pushing their veteran starters too hard.

As Girardi noted before the game, he and pitching coach Dave Eiland had less flexibility with Chamberlain, who threw 1571/3 innings last season. More importantly, the Yankees leaned heavier on Chamberlain because, when Chien-Ming Wang went down with a series of injuries, Chamberlain became the team's fourth starter.

This year, to the contrary, the Yankees didn't even pitch Hughes until April 15, thanks to an early schedule that featured three days off. And for all of the team's recent rotation woes, their strong pitching in the first half - including that of Hughes, a first-time All-Star - gave them some room for error now. Their magic number to clinch a playoff spot, over the Red Sox, is 23.

Chamberlain has evolved from a lights-out reliever to a lights-out starter to a poor starter to a mediocre reliever. The Yankees would like to see their investment in Hughes pay off at a higher rate.

We'll see if Hughes can use the upcoming break to his advantage, to refine his command and his stuff. If he doesn't, his luck might finally run out.