Yankees see mostly good in Hughes' outing

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Phil Hughes' first start of 2012 was hardly a train wreck, much better than the outings by rotation mates CC Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda that preceded it.

But 42/3 innings was hardly acceptable to the 25-year-old righthander, who earned the No. 3 spot in the rotation with an outstanding spring training.

"Just a lot of long, drawn-out at-bats that killed my pitch count today," Hughes said. "I just have to put guys away earlier in counts. The pitch count was the issue today."

Hughes, who posted a 1.56 ERA in his five exhibition outings, allowed two runs and five hits but threw 99 pitches. One of the hits was a home run by Carlos Peña, who went 6-for-12 with two homers and seven RBIs in the series.

"I felt good," said Hughes, who struck out five and walked two. "I threw some good changeups today and I really battled and pitched. There's always positives with the negatives. I'll take those aside, work hard my next bullpen and try and limit the pitch count next time. That was the biggest thing today."

"I thought it was a pretty positive outing," Girardi said. "Obviously, you don't want to see his pitch count up around 100 in five innings, but I thought it was a pretty positive outing the way he threw the baseball today. We saw his velocity hold [low 90s] the whole way throughout, we saw a very good changeup. He threw some decent curveballs and his cutter was good today. He just got in some long counts."

Although it wasn't as dramatic as Friday, when Sabathia put the Yankees in a 4-0 hole in the first inning, or Saturday, when Kuroda fell behind 4-0 in the third, Hughes was disappointed about allowing a run in the first and another in the third.

"Every game this series, we've been down early, and that's hard on our hitters," he said. "We have to do a better job on that."

But Hughes, like his teammates, wasn't going to overreact to an 0-3 start.

"I don't think anybody in here is going to do that," he said. "There's a lot of veteran guys on this team that have been in situations like this before. We have a lot of baseball left to go. We're disappointed, but at the same time, we're not going to act like it's the end of the world here."