Yankees to trim rotation to five Sunday

Sunday will be cut-down day for the Yankees' overstuffed rotation.

Joe Girardi said Thursday that he plans to remove a pitcher from the rotation before the Yankees' series in Kansas City, which begins Monday.

Reading the tea leaves, that means Phil Hughes' start Saturday becomes imperative if the righthander is going to make another one. And it also means A.J. Burnett will not get another chance to impress (or distress) before Girardi whittles his rotation from six to five.

"We've been talking about it that we feel we need to get down to a five-man rotation and go with it," Girardi said before the Yankees beat the Angels, 6-5, Thursday at Yankee Stadium. "If you need to insert someone in for a spot start, we can do that. But we feel that we need to probably get down to that and get these guys on their normal routine."

The top four are set: CC Sabathia, Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia and red-hot rookie Ivan Nova. That leaves Hughes (2-4, 7.11 ERA) and Burnett (8-9, 4.60) as the candidates for demotion to the bullpen or, in the case of Hughes, possibly the minors; he has an option left.

Hughes pitched six shutout innings against the White Sox in his last start Aug. 2. Instead of keeping him on rotation to see if he could build on that, Girardi opted to use Hughes out of the bullpen in the 10th inning in Sunday night's game in Boston. Hughes allowed a one-out double, an intentional walk and a walk-off single and took the loss in the 3-2 defeat.

Hughes has experience in 2009 out of the bullpen; Burnett has none. But Burnett hasn't won a game since June 29. In his last 12 outings -- not a small sample size -- he's 2-6 with a 5.35 ERA.

Girardi was asked if he already knows what the decision is going to be. He didn't say no.

"Let's just say that if I did know, I'm going to announce it here today?" he said. "Before we're through the rotation? No. It doesn't make sense to me. It's something that we'll continue to monitor. You don't know what's going to happen in the next few days. You have no idea . . . We're going to try to make our decision before we go to Kansas City."

Whoever gets demoted could resurface Aug. 27, when the Yankees play a day-night doubleheader in Baltimore.